Teknomorphs 4: Hatchlings
by Cyblade Silver
Summary: The Animorphs find an extremely unorthodox weapon to use against the Yeerks, something that Cassie isn't sure she approves of; meanwhile, two new members of Darkon's forces are released, leaving Gunnar unsure of how to cope with his changing situation.
1. Seen and selected

_**Disclaimer: **Teknoman, Tekkaman Blade, and Animorphs do not belong to me; Teknoman belongs to UPN and Saban, Tekkaman Blade belongs to Tatsunoko Productions, and Animorphs belongs to Scholastic._

**Teknomorphs 4:**

_**Hatchlings**_

Underground, hidden by the leaf-litter on the forest floor, the Radam base was unusually silent. Rapier and Gunnar were both asleep, and Darkon was currently absorbed in his thoughts. Inside one of the teknopods, something rather odd was happening.

Cain Carter, who had been in a mild coma ever since the Radam had captured him and the rest of the Carters, was beginning to stir. As Cain opened his eyes, the events of the last month and a half came rushing painfully back to him. For a long few minutes, all Cain felt like doing was curling up inside the teknopod and letting himself die.

But, as he considered this, Cain realized that what he really wanted to do was to survive. To take this power that he had been given and use it against the Radam. Cain took a deep breath, hearing his heartbeat somehow amplified by the fluid inside the teknopod, and tried to piece together a way for himself to both survive undetected among the ranks of the Radam, and to fight against them as well.

Cain was known for being the consummate practical joker and, as a result of all the planning he had to do to pull one over on his rather observant older brother, Cain had developed an extremely inventive mind. Now, though, now he was going over all the things that he had learned about the Radam. There _had_ to be a way for him to be reasonably autonomous while still retaining the illusion that he acted under Darkon's command.

From what Cain had been forced to learn about the Radam, he knew that they functioned almost exactly like a military unit. Albeit an extraterrestrial one. The so-called common soldiers were watched pretty closely, and not often let out of their base of operations unless it was to attack something.

Cain knew one thing for sure: he did _not_ want to be a common soldier.

XXXX

Darkon awoke, sensing some kind of change within the teknopods. _Hmm, it appears that he has finally regained consciousness._ Over the time he had sifted through the hidden memories of his human captives, Darkon had learned that Cain Carter was the most intelligent of his family. Since all of the Carter humans were greatly intelligent in their own ways, this was a notable thing.

_He will make an excellent First Lieutenant, _Darkon mused. He still wondered what had caused the young human to collapse into that strange coma during the later stages of his transformation. It was probably not very important, since Cain had still survived to the end of the transformation itself.

XXXX

_(Saber.)_

_(Wh-what did you just call me?)_ Cain asked, not having had time to adjust to the idea of telepathic communication before having it forced on him. Cain wasn't even all that sure if he _could _have prepared himself for this kind of intrusion.

_(You are Teknoman Saber,)_ Darkon said, as if this was an accepted fact. As far as Darkon knew or was concerned, it was. _(And you are now my First Lieutenant.)_

_(I'm…)_ Cain searched frantically for something he could say without giving himself away. _(I'm honored, my Lord Darkon,)_ Cain said in the end, lying though his teeth, as it were.

_(Good. I expected you would be. Time for you to come out now.)_

For some reason, Cain got the distinct impression that Darkon was smiling slyly as he made that statement. As the teknopod he was in shattered suddenly from around him, Cain saw why Darkon had seemed so amused. Rising slowly to his feet, Cain found that he was clad from head to toe in armor. As his eyes were suddenly adjusted to the oppressive darkness, Cain found that the armor was outright demonic-looking.

What he was able to see of it was, anyway. _Saber,_ he thought, trying the name out for himself. It was an… interesting choice, though not one Cain was at all sure that he wanted to give up his _own_ name for. But it would make a good cover name, something for him to hide behind while he looked for a way to undermine Darkon's efforts to take over the earth.

_I think I'll just go with it, for now,_ Saber thought to himself. Just then, Saber noticed that there had been someone watching him the entire time he had been thinking about his strange new predicament. At first Saber didn't recognize him, but looking into the stranger's red eyes, Saber got the distinct impression that this person was familiar to him.


	2. Remembrance

_Fritz!_ Saber bit down hard on his tongue to keep from saying the name aloud, and reigned in his telepathic powers as well. He didn't know if Darkon was still reading his thoughts, but Saber hoped not, since something that obvious would have given him away entirely. Saber wanted to go undetected for as long as he could manage, and that meant training himself not to react at the presence of all the people he used to know.

Now would be a good time to start. So Saber stood perfectly still, just staring at Fritz and being stared at in return. Like he couldn't care less; like he didn't even know who it was he was looking at.

_(Saber? Ah, I see you've noticed Gunnar, my Guide,)_ Darkon said.

Saber managed to keep whatever he was thinking to himself. _(Guide, my lord?)_

_(Yes. It means that you will be required to consult him in regards to any mission that you feel will require stealth or subterfuge. Gunnar thinks that this will be required for all of our missions, but somehow I doubt that humans are as formidable as he wants me to believe. Nevertheless, he is still an important part of our cause, and I will expect you to treat him as such, First Lieutenant Saber.)_

_(Yes, Lord Darkon, I will be sure to remember that.) Don't think about it, don't feel,_ Saber told himself.

_(Good, see that you do remember. You are dismissed.)_

Saber could feel Darkon's attention turning away from him, and he realized that that was because another of the teknopods was starting to hatch. For a second, Saber thought about turning around, walking away, and trying to find some of his clothes that he still wanted to wear. But, in the end Saber decided that it would be better for him if he knew what to expect.

If he knew who was under the armor, and what their new name was going to be, Saber knew that there was less of a chance of him mistakenly calling them by their old human name. With that in mind, Saber walked back over to the teknopods. He could clearly see which one was going to hatch, since the pod itself was pulsing in a rapid and erratic manner. It would have probably been obvious even to someone who didn't know what was going on that _something_ was going to happen.

It seemed that that _something_ was going to happen very soon now. Darkon either hadn't noticed that he was still standing in the exact same place, or else he was just choosing not to comment on that fact. As Saber watched, the teknopod seemed to rip itself apart from the inside, and the Teknoman within was dropped to the ground.

This new Teknoman was tall, topping even Saber himself in height, though only just. The armor was also far more streamlined than his own. And blue, with yellow highlights. Seen from the back, this new Teknoman was still a strange and impressive sight. _I wonder who he is, and I wonder who he _used_ to be._

When the new Teknoman turned around, detransforming in a bright flash of crimson light, Saber saw that he wasn't a _he_ at all. It was Katherine, Conrad's fiancée and once one of Saber's best female friends. He wondered just what _her_ new name would be.

_(Greetings, Teknoman Sword,)_ Saber heard Darkon say.

_Okay, Sword, I guess I could get used to remembering that._ Saber wondered for a minute why Darkon didn't seem to notice the fact that he was still there, watching.

_(It is good for a warrior to know the forces he intends to command,)_ Darkon said offhandedly, proving that he hadn't been as oblivious as Saber had thought.

_(Thank you, Lord Darkon,)_ Saber said, with enough false modesty in his voice that he nearly made himself laugh. _(Your respect means a lot to me.)_

_(Of course.)_

Looking over the other teknopods, Saber saw that not one of them looked like it was ready to hatch. Turning away from what he had begun to think of as the birthing grounds, Saber headed for the place that he somehow knew or sensed that his old backpack and those of all the people he had been traveling with had been stored.

Today had been an interesting day.

XXXX

Slade woke up, feeling somehow as if he had both gained and lost something that was very important to him. He didn't know just what this instinctive notion of his meant, but over time as he had adapted to the fact that he had no real memories besides the ones that his allies and Shara had helped him to make, Slade had come to rely more and more on his instincts.

They were in fact the only other real thing he could count on. Sitting up, Slade saw that Shara was also awake. His sister was also sitting up, but she had her legs folded up so that her knees were pressed against her chest. Shara had also wrapped her arms around her calves and buried her chin into her knees. She looked lost and alone.

"Shara, is something wrong?" Slade asked, wondering at her behavior.

_(She's here again, but it's not really her anymore.)_

Wondering for a moment just why his sister would resort to using telepathy when the person she was speaking to was right next to her, Slade continued the conversation. _(What are you talking about, Shara? Who's she? And why would it not really be her anymore?)_

"I'm sorry Slade," Shara said, trying to sound as if what she was saying didn't really mean anything to her and only mildly succeeding. "You probably don't even know what I'm talking about. I'm sorry for boring you like that."

"You're not boring me, Shara. I just wanted to know what you were talking about," Slade assured her.


	3. Travel plans

Shara nodded, but she didn't say anything more. Just as Slade was going to start asking questions, Cassie and Rachel walked into the barn. His attention successfully and completely diverted, Slade turned to look down at the two other girls. They were talking about going to some place called planet Hollywood. Shara looked mildly interested, at least, so Slade decided to see if they could join them.

_(Hey down there,)_ Slade called. _(What's this planet Hollywood you're talking about? Do you think Shara and I could come?)_

He heard the two of them fall silent, then laugh. Slade wondered why that was, since all he had done was ask to come with them to this 'planet Hollywood' place. Shara was giving him a sidelong smile, telling him without words or telepathy that she appreciated what he was doing for her, so that made Slade feel better about it. Cassie and Rachel came up into the hayloft then, both of them smiling.

"We're only going to get to go to the opening of Planet Hollywood if Jake says it's okay," Rachel said.

Slade nodded. It made perfect sense to him, since Jake was their leader and what he said was law. Slade also knew that Jake might not approve of this.

"Why's that?" Shara asked.

Slade turned quickly to look at his sister, ready to rebuke her. She might have been given more autonomy than he was, which was only natural given her position and function, but there were still limits. That was when Rachel spoke up again.

"Well, it has a lot to do with the fact that Marco and I couldn't get tickets to the big event. So, well... what we were thinking is-"

"They were thinking that they'd use their morphing power," Cassie said, laughing for a moment. "They're probably going to try to get Jake to say they can use their bird morphs."

Shara looked interested at this prospect, though Slade personally disapproved. Slade doubted that Jake would feel much differently than he did, so he decided not to say anything.

"That would be kind of fun," Shara said. "I've never been to the opening of a restaurant before."

"Neither have I," Cassie said, smiling.

Slade hoped that they wouldn't be too disappointed; there was very little chance that Jake would be willing to give them leave to use their powers for something so trivial.

XXXX

Jake rolled his eyes as Marco started talking again; not seeming to realize just how much of an effort Jake was making to ignore him. Or maybe he did and he just didn't care; that was more than likely, given Marco's personality. It was funny, and kind of annoying, either way.

He was babbling, there was no other way to describe it; Marco-babble was one of the most enduring forms of babble that had ever been babbled, at least to hear Shara tell it. Marco seemed to be working up to asking him something, something big if he was reading the signs in the babble right.

Whether or not it was something he'd be willing to go along with remained to be seen, but it was definitely something big.

(Who is this Schwarzenegger?) Ax demanded, cutting into the babble. (I have heard Marco use his name before.)

"Ah-nuld?" Marco returned, with a passable imitation of the man's Austrian accent. "Who iss Ah-nuld? Ah-nuld is der man, zat's who Ah-nuld iss."

(What man?) Ax asked, Marco's explanation having been no help.

"He's done work in film and television, and he used to be a body-builder," Shara said, before Marco could say anything else. "He's not really a very good actor, though."

"Heresy!" Marco shouted, his right pointer finger aimed at Shara's face; Jake barely stifled a laugh.

"What? He's not," she reiterated with a shrug. "His best role was playing an emotionless, killer cyborg; and that's not saying much."

"I _refuse_ to listen to this _heresy_," Marco said, sticking both fingers in his ears; Jake's stomach was starting to cramp with the effort not to laugh.

"Arnold Schwarzenegger is a bad, over rated, muscle-bound goon of an actor, with the emotional range of a wheel of cheese," Shara said, right into Marco's ear, holding his right wrist far enough away from that ear that there wasn't much chance of him not hearing her.

"_Shun_! _Shun_ the heretic!" Marco said, once it was clear that Shara had finished with him.

Clearing his throat loudly enough to draw the attention of the two of them, Jake raised an eyebrow. "Is there _any_ chance of us actually getting to know just what you wanted to do when you called us all out here, Marco?"

"Well, before I had to deal with a _certain person's_ heresy," he said, giving Shara a mocking dirty look, she returned it with a flatly amused stare. "I was _saying_ that it's pathetic how totally ignorant Ax is, when it comes to important human cultural stuff? Good grief! It makes you want to cry! He knows nothing! Nothing! He's been on Earth for months already, and yet has he experienced any really important human culture? No. And it's a travesty. A crime. A pity. A shame. It's a-"

"Oh, _shut up_ already," Jake cut in, knowing that Marco would go on for as long as he wasn't stopped. "Let me get this straight: there's a new Planet Hollywood opening in town. You and Rachel have decided that you want to go, but you can't get tickets. So you want to fly there in morph. You want us all to use our powers for a completely selfish purpose. Is that it, basically?"

"No, absolutely not," Rachel said, with a shake of her head that set her blonde hair tumbling. "We want to do this all for Ax. He needs to be exposed to culture. Me, I don't really care," she concluded, a grin beginning to break out on her face as she lied.

"It's an entertainment event!" Marco exclaimed, with what Jake personally thought was a bit _too_ much enthusiasm. "A major, _major_ event. Stars! Famous people! Millionaires! Babes! A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Ax-man to see Bruce and Demi."

"Bruce Willis is going to be there?" Shara asked, as Cassie burst into a short peel of giggles, and then tried to look serious.

"Ah, _that_ got your attention," Marco said, giving Shara a sidelong smirk.

"Actually, I'm not really a fan of his," she said, as Cassie burst out giggling and then swiftly tried to compose herself. "He just kind of reminds me of Ed Harris."

Before Marco could think of any way to respond to that, even before he seemed to fully process it, Jake spoke up again. "And, you somehow figure that the 'human culture' Ax needs to be exposed to is Bruce Willis playing a harmonica?" he asked, with a completely, utterly unimpressed look at Marco. Then he turned his attention to Rachel. "Come on; I know _you_ don't usually go in for these kinds of things. So spill it. Why are you so into this _now_?"

"The whole cultural thing," she stopped when Jake gave her a Look. "Okay, look; as part of the deal, they're having a fashion show. Ralph Lauren. You know how I feel about Ralph Lauren."

"Oh, man," Jake groaned, while Shara tried to stifle laughter.

"Plus..." Marco said, an excited lilt at the end of that single word.

"Plus what?" Jake prodded, his gaze fixed on Marco again.

Rachel sighed, briefly rolling her eyes. "Okay, Lucy Lawless is going to be there, too. But that's not why I want to go."

"Okay, _that_ actually sounds interesting," Shara said, looking a great deal more into the conversation than she had been.

"Well, of course _you'd_ think so," Marco said, shooting her an amused look. "Xena is both yours and Rachel's role model, after all."

Jake made a face, and Shara rolled her eyes.

"And oh, by the way," Marco said, his tone silky and borderline insinuating. "Not that you'd really care, Jake, but a Mr. O'Neal is going to be there. A Mr. Shaquille O'Neal."

"Shaq?" he echoed; okay, so this was basically a completely frivolous, completely unnecessary use of their powers, but they'd been running nothing but missions for the last few weeks.

And the last one had been one of the worst he could remember; maybe they _could_ use some time for themselves.

"Shaq," Marco confirmed, grinning widely.

So, personal time; using their powers in a way that _didn't _involve hunting down the Yeerks and either trying to hurt them or trying to spy on them. Just something fun, something that _wouldn't_ end in blood and horror. He could use some more things like that; the others probably could, too.

"We, then we're there," he said at last, offering Marco a small grin of his own.


	4. Watching over

Marco and Rachel were clearly excited about that, which fit, since they had been the ones to propose the idea in the first place. Cassie and Shara seemed amused, and Shara herself also seemed curious. Ax and Tobias were as unreadable to him as ever, and Slade looked like he'd been confused by the whole proceeding, but was going to go along with it anyway.

That fit with what he knew of Slade's personality; he'd never been particularly independent-minded.

XXXX

As he considered his options – limited as they so obviously were when he was surrounded by enemies like this – Saber came to the conclusion that he should try _not_ to come to any conclusions at the moment. He didn't know just what his options would be in the future, and there was still the chance that he would be presented with something better later on. For now, though, he would wait and watch.

Cain Carter wouldn't have liked it, but then _he _wasn't really Cain Carter anymore.

XXXX

As they all morphed into their respective bird morphs, wings, talons, beaks, and feathers emerging from human flesh and bodies shrinking down into lighter, more compact forms, Cassie reflected that this was probably just what all of them really needed right now. Some time without the threat of the Yeerk invasion hanging over them. Some time to just be normal kids, even if they _weren't _strictly normal anymore.

Flapping their way into the air, the Animorphs fell in behind Marco and Rachel as they lead the way to the waterfront. They all stayed a reasonable distance from any of the others, since none of them wanted to be spotted by the Yeerks, or by anyone else who might have seen them all together and thought it strange.

Their sensitive raptor vision scanned the ground, Rachel and Marco worked in tandem to bring their friends to the opening of the newest Planet Hollywood. Soon enough, they were in the right area, and making their way to a good observation-point for the goings-on there. As the eight Animorphs arrayed themselves in a loose formation, most of them watching the ceremony but a couple of them keeping an eye open for anything that might cause problems for their friends, they shifted slightly as the winds bore them up.

One person in particular had already spotted a potential problem.

(We look like a raptor convention,) Tobias groused. (I mean, why not throw in a golden Eagle and a few kestrels? If there are any bird watchers down there, they must be completely freaking out at the sight of us.)

(No one is watching _us_,) Rachel said, sounding like she would have been smiling if she'd had a human face to do so with. (They're all watching Shaq jam with Bruce Willis and John Goodman.)

The huge outdoor stage beneath them was alive with activity; all of the various stars and other famous people were moving around on it, casting occasional glances out into the crowd. The crowd itself pressed up against the stage, moving almost as a single entity as it surged and rippled with the motions of each individual comprising it. Most of what the Animorphs saw of the crowd, when they bothered to look at them at all, was their haircuts.

And not always the best _looking_ haircuts, at that.

The waterfront was bordered by fifty- and sixty-story buildings, and with Rachel's Eagle eyes – adapted as they were for spotting fish beneath the surface of streams – she could catch occasional glimpses of people inside those buildings. People who were watching the proceedings below with relish, aided by telescopes and binoculars.

(Look, there she is!) Shara called cheerfully.

(Hey, yeah!) Rachel said, surprised. (I mean,) she quickly amended, thinking of the ribbing she would get from Marco if she seemed _too_ excited. (Oh, it's her. Lucy what's-her-name.)

Shara and Marco both laughed at the obvious way Rachel had tried to hide her enthusiasm, but Marco was the only one who spoke right then.

(Xena! It's Xena!) he crowed. (Okay, Rachel, the time has come: you fly down there, morph back to human, and you and Xena have it out. We'll see who can kick whose butt,) he paused, trying to sound thoughtful. (Oh, and take Shara with you, then you'll have a threesome.)

(Marco, Marco, Marco,) Rachel said, sighing as Shara laughed. (You _do_ like to cling to your pathetic little fantasies, don't you?)

(Yes; I absolutely do,) Marco said, with obvious relish. (And hey, make sure you don't forget the leather outfits. I'd hate to think the two of you were underdressed.)

(Remind me to smack him when we're all back in human form, will you Rachel?) Shara asked, clearly using private thought-speak since no one else reacted.

(I definitely will, Shara,) Rachel said; it was certainly a less unappealing plan than the one _she_ had been considering.

Wheeling around in a large circle, the activities on the ground at the moment holding no particular interest for her, Rachel came into direct sight of the Kenny Building. It was seated alongside the river, though separated from it by a four-lane road and a small strip of grass. The imposing edifice of the building was covered in glass, only thin windowpanes breaking the smoothness of its mirrored surface.

From the ground, and even to most things in the air, the reflective windows would serve as an almost-perfect visual obstruction. However, to the eyes of a Bald Eagle, or any of the other birds that hunted fish, that wasn't an issue. Rachel could see through the glass of the building, right through to the man standing in the empty, sixtieth-floor office at the top of the tower.


	5. Complication

Something about him, though maybe it was just the fact that he was all alone there, drew Rachel's attention and she circled back around for a closer look. That was how she managed to see him pick up a metal-framed chair that had been sitting close to him, and throw it out the window. The window itself exploded outward in a hail of glass shards, the largest, heaviest of which sliced through the tops of the – thankfully empty – cars that had been parked near the building.

(What in the...) Rachel wondered, before she clamped down on her curiosity and made the decision to _act_. (Hey! Guys! Come here! Back here! To the Kenny Building, fast!)

(Is it Arnold?) Marco asked; she ignored him.

(Oh, no!) Cassie exclaimed, having seen the falling glass, herself. (That guy is going to jump!)

(I believe he would be injured if he jumped out of such a high location,) Ax observed, as calm as he ever was. (Therefore, I doubt that he would-) the Andalite yelped in surprise as, as if in mockery of his earlier assertion, the man ran head-long at the window that he had just shattered.

(There's eight of us!) Rachel exclaimed. (We have to be able to do something! Come on!)

(It won't be enough to save him if he hits the ground,) Tobias said grimly. (But maybe we could make the river, at least.)

The eight Animorphs converged; wheeling around on a level glide, soaring up from lower altitudes, or diving down from a higher one. But all of them soon met up near the windows, all with the same goal in mind: to save the man whose life they had taken into their own, for the moment metaphorical, hands. The man himself pushed aside the remaining shards of glass that remained, stubbornly clinging to the frame of the window, and launched himself out, feet first and aimed for the hard ground far below.

Drawing on the flight-experience of each of their respective bird morphs, the eight Animorphs sped toward the falling man; almost every one of them hoping that their own strength would be able to get them there in time. Slade of course, was simply following the orders he had been given; Jake hadn't contradicted them, so that was as good as an endorsement in his mind.

The man, as he fell, came nearly face-to-face with both Rachel and Shara for the few moments in which he hung, poised between the force of gravity and the force of his own momentum. Gravity won out, of course, as it always did in situations like this, and the man began the long plunge to his death. Or, what would have been his death, if not for eight very determined birds.


	6. Impromptu Rescue Mission

Opening her talons as she raked them forward, Rachel clamped down on both the collar of his shirt and the man's own collarbone. She was fairly sure that this action had hurt him, but none of those present were concerned about that.

Tobias came in with the swiftness granted to him by long experience, grabbing the man's left arm and holding tight. Shara and Jake arrived at nearly the same instant; Jake grabbing the back of the man's collar, while Shara sank her talons into his left shoulder. Slade grabbed onto the man's right shoulder, and then the man started screaming.

(Hell of a time for _this_,) Shara groused, annoyed.

(Glide toward the water!) Tobias ordered tersely. (No, don't _flap_ you idiots! _Glide_!)

Stilling her wings with an effort of will, Rachel forgave Tobias for calling them idiots; he was the one with the most flying experience, the expert. Besides, this situation was almost tailor-made for making people tense and snappish. Cassie and Ax arrived then, sinking their own talons into the man's upper-arms, and Marco arrived last of all, gripping the back of the falling man's pale gray suit jacket.

(Line your wings up on my angle!) Tobias commanded. (Like you're aiming for a level glide, but stay focused on the river!)

Bringing her wings into line with Tobias' own, glad that there was at least _someone_ there who knew what they were doing, Rachel tried to ignore the loud screams still echoing in her ears. The man was clearly panicking, and as much as it annoyed her to have to deal with it, she knew he had valid reasons. He _had_ started falling a bit slower; not nearly enough to ensure that the landing wouldn't kill him, but slower all the same.

He was also moving slightly forward as he fell, being steered toward the water's edge by the activities of their bird morphs. She didn't quite know if they would make it, it was like some insane geometry problem that she was being tasked to solve, but Rachel hoped. It would be really annoying to have all of this hard work that they were doing go to waste.

The ground seemed to rush up to hit them, moving all the faster than it had been while she had had something else to focus on. It was too close now; only fifty feet of open air between them and the man they were trying to rescue. Not enough time!

Just then, the nine of them passed over the water's edge.

(Release! Release, but watch out for the snapback!) Tobias shouted.

Opening her talons at the same time as the others, Rachel found herself tumbling end-over-end. Flapping twisting and flapping some more, she managed to right herself before she would have fallen into the river alongside the man. She finally understood what Tobias had meant when he had warned them about the snapback.

Filling her wings with a chance headwind, Rachel soared and circled back up into the sky to meet up with her fellow Animorphs.

(Hah-HAH! Wow! Oh, that was _so_ cool!) she exulted; then, feeling slightly guilty for having forgotten about the others, even if only for a few moments, she decided to ask after them. (Everyone else okay?)

When all of her fellow Animorphs had answered in the affirmative, Rachel turned her attention back to the man who had just tried to kill himself. He wasn't on or even near the surface of the river he'd landed in, and as she wheeled around over the water, searching for signs of the man she'd just helped to rescue, Rachel saw why: the man had plunged ten feet down into the river, and had actually ended up stuck in the silt-filled mud at the bottom. He was panicking now, thrashing his arms and throwing up huge, billowing clouds of mud, silt, and churning up masses of bubbles.

(You have _got_ to be kidding me,) Rachel groused, once she had managed to take in the man's new situation. (He's stuck in the mud at the bottom of the river!) she reported, swiftly becoming annoyed; she'd still do her best to save him, of course, but this was just _ridiculous_. (Cassie, Marco, come on! We're supposed to be waterbirds, right?)

Folding her wings, Rachel fell from the sky like a thrown rock, shedding the altitude she had just gained and converting it into momentum for her plunge. The barrier between air and water loomed in front of her for a few moments, before she shot through it. It was a really cool feeling, Rachel reflected, having warm air against her body one moment and then cold water the next.

Then, it stopped being so cool.

The water didn't soak up into her feathers, so she would clearly still be able to fly once she got out, but her wings were almost impossible to move under the weight of the surrounding water. Rachel had thought, just as she had plunged into the water, that she would be able to move in just the same way as she had while in the air; that she would just sort of fly underwater. However, that was far from the case here.

(Cassie! Marco! Don't do it!) she shouted, hoping her friends would hear her in time to sheer off and save themselves.

(No _duh_,) Marco retorted. (Just because _you're_ a complete lunatic, doesn't mean the rest of us are, Rachel.)

(You have to get into another morph, Rachel!) Cassie shouted. (He's struggling now; if he hits your Eagle morph, he could break your bones, or even end up drowning you!)

She'd already started demorphing, though more for the fact that she could barely move in her current morph as opposed to any danger she might have been in from someone flailing around, but Rachel was glad to know that Cassie was still looking out for her.

XXXX

When she'd seen Rachel dive into the water, and in spite of the fact that she knew she probably wouldn't do any good to her in her current morph, Shara had dove right down after her. She'd heard some of the others calling for her to stop, and even thought one of them might have been Jake, but she wasn't going to give up on Rachel just because some of the others were telling her not to go. She wasn't Slade, after all.

Falling into the water, Shara didn't even bother trying to move her wings, instead she started her demorph and once she had most of her leg-strength back, she kicked her way toward Rachel. The other girl had just taken a breath of air, something that Shara's own lungs were letting her know would be a good idea at the moment, so she rolled over in the water and stuck her head back out.

Blowing out the stale air lingering in her lungs, Shara sucked in as deep a breath as she could and then dove back under the water. Powering her way downward even as her better-than-human-vision reasserted itself, Shara found Rachel as she was well on her way to becoming a dolphin. It was a good choice, she had to admit.

(Shara? What're you doing all the way down _here_?)

_(I might be inclined to ask _you_ just the same question, Rachel,)_ she said, swimming closer. _(Come on; let's go save that guy you found.)_

(Right,) Rachel said, as she swam up and offered her dorsal fin to Shara. (I'd just about forgotten you could do that,) she muttered, sounding like she hadn't quite meant to voice that thought.

_(Well, you've got to admit, it's a useful talent for times like this,)_ she said, continuing to kick even as she was pulled along by Rachel.

They soon found the man who had tried to kill himself, and Shara wondered briefly what he had been thinking. What must his life have been like, that he'd seen death as his only escape? She wouldn't have the chance to ask him, of course, since she and Rachel were the only ones who could communicate in any kind of understandable way when they were in environments like this, but she was curious all the same.

Wrapping her legs around Rachel's midsection, Shara gripped the man under the arms and pulled with all of her considerable strength. Rachel was also doing her part, pushing the man out of the mud he'd landed in with her beak, churning the water as she beat it with her powerful tail. With one last, mighty wrench, they tore the man free from the mud and Shara relaxed slightly as Rachel began to power them all towards the riverbank.

Releasing her grip for a few moments, Shara gulped the last breath she could safely take, then ducked back under the water. Steadying the man, she crossed her legs at the ankles and abandoned herself to Rachel's forward momentum. Moving less meant she would use less of her stored oxygen, and at this point that was really the best idea.

No sense in letting the people on land know just what kind of strange things had happened tonight.

When they reached the riverbank, she knew where they were because she had periodically opened her eyes to check their position, though the mud in the river made her eyes sting something fierce, she saw a pair of arms reaching down into the water. Smiling slightly, knowing that her job was almost done at last, Shara released her hold and let whoever this new person was take care of the man.

The fingers brushed hers, and on impulse Shara gave them a brief squeeze, a way of saying 'thank you' when there was no feasible way of expressing thanks in a more conventional manner; she couldn't exactly use her telepathy on this man, after all.

Pulling away as the hands tried to grab at _her_, since she would be leaving with Rachel soon enough, Shara released her hold and kicked away from the riverbank. Grabbing onto Rachel's dorsal fin as she closed ranks with the younger girl, Shara relaxed a bit. She was starting to feel a bit light-headed from lack of oxygen, but there was an easy solution for that kind of thing.


	7. Diving Deep

_(Rachel, cover me. I'm going to transform,)_ she said, kicking her way downward so that the murk of the water would absorb at least _some_ of the light produced by her transformation.

(Right. On it,) Rachel said.

_(Thanks.)_

Closing her eyes, Shara drew on the power that the Radam had forced upon her down in that underground hell they had built for themselves and anyone who had the misfortune to stumble inside. The energies of her transformation filled her, burning away all traces of the light-headedness that she had been suffering from in this airless environment. Scanning the riverbed, Shara quickly located its lowest point.

_(Rachel, follow me; we need to get to the middle of the river,)_ she said, projecting an image of what she had seen, and adding in some of what she had in mind.

(Yeah, got it,) the other girl said, sounding amused. (That's a really interesting idea you have there, Shara.)

_(Well, I think it might work better than trying to fly out of this river as birds,)_ she said, giving some juice to her thrusters and powering her way along the riverbed. _(If nothing else, it'll be quicker.)_

(Well, you'd definitely be right about _that_,) Rachel laughed.

As the two of them made it to the lowest point of the riverbed, Shara flipped over on her back, wrapped her armored arms as far as she could get them around what passed for Rachel's midsection in her dolphin morph, and opened her thrusters up all the way. The two of them burst out of the water like one of the rockets Shara had so enjoyed watching when she was still fully human, blasting up through the atmosphere too fast to be seen as anything but a blurred streak of pink light.

_(You should probably start demorphing now, Rachel,)_ she said, as they cleared the tops of the buildings in the time it took to blink.

(Yeah, I think you might be right about that,) Rachel said.

XXXX

Starting her demorph back to human, Rachel tried to ignore the feelings she was getting from her dolphin mind. Sure, it had all been a game before, but now that the both of them were so far out of the water, the dolphin had started to panic. She hadn't known before this that dolphins even _could_ panic, but she was finding out right here and now.

It wasn't a pleasant experience.

Once she was fully human again, Rachel took a deep breath and started morphing into a Bald Eagle again. Her skin itched as feathers sprouted out of it, but she wasn't nearly distracted enough by that sensation not to notice when Shara opened her arms and pushed the two of them apart. The other girl had also clearly turned off those weird rockets of hers, since the two of them were no longer rising into the air like they had once been. A blast of bright, rosy pink light obscured Shara entirely for a few seconds, and when it cleared that weird armor of hers was completely gone.

The wind whipped Shara's hair upwards, and just before she turned her attention back to her own morph, Rachel saw Shara close her eyes.

Opening her wings as the last of the Eagle's bones slid into its proper place, Rachel folded them back and dove though the clouds on her way to meet back up with the other Animorphs. She knew that they were probably going to ream her and Shara out big time for what they had just done, but they'd saved someone's life today. Even if no one else but her and Shara thought so, that _had_ to count for _something_.

Shara came racing down out of the clouds what seemed like just a few seconds later, blazing past Rachel like she'd been fired out of a missile tube. Rachel was slightly annoyed that there were _two_ people with faster bird morphs than she had, but hers was still the biggest. She could still rely on that, at least.

(What in the hell were the two of you _thinking_?!) Jake demanded, as soon as her and Shara got back into thought-speak range.

On one hand, Jake _never_ swore, so anytime he did was a warning to take whatever he was saying seriously. On the other, if he'd really wanted to tell them something important, he probably would have remembered that he could have had Slade relay it to them. So, while Jake _was_ fairly cheesed-off at them, it wasn't anything that they should be concerned about in the long-term.

(What, did you just expect Shara and me to just let that man drown?) she demanded, indignant. (Please. I thought we Animorphs were supposed to be saving people, here.)

(We're _supposed_ to be saving the _entire world_ from being enslaved by the Yeerks,) Jake said, in that low, silky tone he used when he was well and truly cheesed off by something. (Not to mention the Radam, which we still haven't managed to really _do_ anything about, aside from discovering that they're here and freeing two of their Teknomen without them knowing it.)

(Or, you know, them hunting us down and killing us,) Marco added, and Rachel didn't quite know if he was trying to break up the tension or what.

(Yes, or that,) Jake said. (What I'm trying to say, here, is that we can't afford to go trying to intervene in any accident that we might see. Especially when there's the chance, however slight, of our being spotted by Controllers. The Yeerks are, for now, the most immediate threat we have to deal with. We can't afford to take senseless risks.)

(All right, Jake,) Shara said. (We'll keep that in mind.)

(Rachel?) Jake prompted, after he'd probably said something that she hadn't been inclined to pay attention to to Shara.

(Right,) she said, just to get Jake off her back; they'd been moving way too fast to be seen back there, no chance of being spotted by Controllers.

Maybe a _Teknoman_ could have spotted them, but there didn't seem to be any more of those than just Slade and Shara. She didn't quite know why, since Jake and Marco had both said that there were a lot of those weird plants with the armored figures inside. Why more of them weren't running around loose was a question that she didn't know how to get the answer to.


	8. Heading Home

When he'd gone back to his teknopod, curled inside the alien plant like it was some kind of strange womb, Gunnar tried not to think about the things that he'd just seen. Kathy and Cain were both gone now; worse than gone, really, since he'd still be seeing their faces while he looked at Sword and Saber. His old friend and his older sister might have the same memories that he had of them, but nothing was the same.

Not them, and not even him.

Maybe it would have been better for him if he'd just been a normal Teknoman, brainwashed to be loyal to the Radam, but that wasn't something that Gunnar let himself dwell on. The thought really only came up when he was at his lowest, so like always he shoved it aside and tried to move on. There might not have been much he could do to halt the invasion and frustrate Darkon's plans for the Earth, but he was determined to do all he could.

Darkon or no Darkon, there were just some things that a man _had_ to do when his home was at stake.

XXXX

Winging her way back home, after having said her goodbyes to the others, Rachel scanned the familiar rooftops of her neighborhood. It was good to be going home after such a long, satisfying day. Heck, she'd saved someone's _life_; well, her and Shara together, but someone who would have otherwise have died was alive because she had been good enough to spot him before he'd managed to throw himself out of that window.

It was a good feeling, knowing that she had made _that_ kind of a difference; like the better missions she and the other Animorphs participated in, fighting for people who hadn't been given the chance to fight for themselves.

She almost wondered if the fights they were going to be having against the Radam were going to be the same. Sure, those Teknomen were pretty tough, and the things she had seen Slade and Shara _do_ made her kind of uneasy when she let herself think too much about them, but the Radam were enough like the Yeerks in enough respects that Rachel didn't have any qualms about resisting them. They were just one more enemy for her and the others to fight, that was all.

Spotting her house after a bit more flying, Rachel tucked her wings and dove in through her bedroom window. Flaring her wings to cancel her momentum, Rachel landed in the middle of her floor and began to demorph. As her Eagle body reshaped itself by fits and starts into her normal, human form, Rachel yawned.

She was looking forward to getting some sleep after all this excitement.

XXXX

As she settled back down next to her brother, Shara contemplated what she had helped Rachel to do earlier. Her father would have probably said that it was noble of her to have risked herself for another person's life like that; at least, he would have if the Radam hadn't killed him for not being as young and strong as most of the rest of the people they had captured in those horrible pods of theirs. Still, she could see the point that Jake had been trying to make.

They really _couldn't_ afford the kind of breach in security that her and Rachel's impulsive actions had risked causing them. The Animorphs were Earth's- were _humanity's_ only real hope of holding out against the Yeerks until the Andalites either arrived to save them, the Yeerks gave up on Earth and returned to their own planet, or... Shara wasn't going to let herself think about the third option; possible or not, she wasn't about to let the Radam take her home. She'd die fighting them first.

Slade had already fallen asleep, she noticed then, and as Shara herself settled down for the night, she wondered for a moment just what the Animorphs' next mission was going to be.


	9. Morning News

Waking up in her nice, warm bed, in her room that had been repaired and re-carpeted after that little incident she'd had with the crocodile DNA and all of the assorted problems she'd had with _that_ particular morph, Rachel yawned and stretched. Yesterday had been a fairly interesting day; she and Shara had saved a man's life, and that was still a good thing no matter _what_ Jake had said. Besides, just because he was the leader of the Animorphs, that didn't mean that he was the undisputed, final authority in everything they did.

No matter _what_ Slade seemed to think.

Shoving the thoughts of one of the Animorphs' strangest members aside, not in the mood to try to puzzle out the motives of someone who seemed to have no spine, Rachel left the warm comfort of her bed and began to prepare for her day. It was times like this that she found herself almost envying Shara: the other girl didn't have to get up, get dressed, and go to school; she probably spent almost all of her time psyching herself up for the next mission that the Animorphs would carry out. And, besides that, Cassie had said that she brought Shara and Slade breakfast where they slept.

Rachel herself didn't get breakfast in bed unless she was sick, or it was her birthday.

Chuckling slightly at the direction her thoughts had taken at the end, since she kinda doubted that Shara was the kind of person to think about those kinds of things when she was trying to help save the world, Rachel headed down to breakfast. It might not have been breakfast-in-bed, but she wasn't about to skip it just because of _that_.

XXXX

When she woke up to the sound of someone coming inside, someone she suspected wasn't Cassie since she knew that the younger girl was heading off to school, having already eaten her breakfast and said her goodbyes to the both of them, Shara quickly turned herself invisible and moved out to the edge of the hay-loft. Slade was already there, and when she turned to look at his face, Shara saw that his eyes were fixed on the man that she had glimpsed walking inside.

That, combined with the half-lancer gripped in his hand, let her know that he was prepared to defend them both if it came down to a fight. Smiling slightly – it was almost sweet, the way Slade was so determined to protect her in spite of the fact that he'd admitted to remembering almost nothing about her – Shara turned her attention to the man moving around in the barn below them. Slade, for all his determination to keep their secrets, could sometimes go overboard in his zeal. It came with being Radam-influenced, she knew.

So, if she didn't want this man to end up dead and buried in some unmarked grave – which she didn't, since she was starting to recognize him – Shara knew that she was going to have to reign Slade in.

_(Wait a minute,)_ she said, gripping the arm opposite the one that held his lancer. _(I don't think he's come here for us, Slade. I think he might want something in the barn itself.)_

_(How do you figure that?)_ Slade asked, not taking his eyes off the man for a second.

_(Because I recognize him,)_ she said, turning her attention to the man she had come to recognize. _(That's Cassie's father. See? He's just here to take care of the animals.)_

_(Maybe,)_ Slade said, and when she looked back at her brother, Shara found that his eyes were tracking the man's movements minutely; if Cassie's father made even the slightest move, Slade was clearly determined to be aware of it._ (Still, if he comes up here...)_

_(If he starts to come up here,)_ _Which I pretty much doubt he will_, Shara didn't add. _(I'll help you get him to go back out.)_

It was something that she had begun developing, both in response to Darkon's attempts on her mind, and because she was just curious to know how these telepathic abilities she'd been granted by the Radam could be used. With what she'd experienced from Darkon, who had obviously changed his tactics when she herself kept repulsing his attacks on her mind, the Radam's telepathy wasn't just some blunt instrument that was used to keep their Teknomen in line. It could be a lot more subtle than that.

In fact, if she hadn't been so used to sealing her mind against outside influences from Darkon's previous attempts on it, Shara worried that she might have found herself out in the forest one night; closer to Darkon's base of operations than she would ever have voluntarily gone.

Dragging her focus back to the present, Shara continued to watch as Cassie's father went about what she was beginning to realize was a normal routine for him. There wasn't anything particularly _routine_ about the way he moved through the barn, at least not insofar as the path he took to get around, but his actions were beginning to become familiar to her: the way he would look at the papers that were clipped to the various cages, then check to make sure that the animals inside still had food and water. It was something that Shara had come to expect; not exactly a routine, it wasn't quite frequent enough for that, but it _was_ something of a comfort all the same.

_(See, Slade?)_ she said, smiling, more for herself than for her brother, though. _(He's leaving now; you didn't have anything to worry about.)_

_(Yeah, I guess,)_ Slade said, sounding just as neutral as he had when he'd clearly been planning to kill Cassie's father if he went too far into the barn. _(I'm going to go back to sleep.)_

_(Yeah,)_ she said, already beginning to feel the heavy, intense lethargy of what she was now beginning to settle back over her.

She didn't particularly _like _the way she felt tired all the time, or the fact that she never felt entirely full no matter how much food Cassie brought for them, but she knew that the alternative was worse. The alternative, of course, being to return to Darkon; to be nourished and confined by the teknopods within the artificial cavern where he kept the rest of the slave-warriors that had once been her friends and the members of her family.

At least, the ones that had been unlucky enough to survive the transformation process.


	10. Stolen Credit

All through the school day, in the back of her mind while she had been going about her normal, daily routine, Rachel had been fuming. She still remembered the headline; and sure, she knew that it was probably a good thing that neither she nor Shara had been mentioned at all, she was still annoyed when she thought about it. It was irritating on any number of levels, and she was also slightly annoyed with _herself_ for being annoyed by it at all.

So, when Jake called her ever-so-casually on the phone and asked if she'd like to meet him and some friends down at the mall, she'd accepted gratefully.

Getting her mom to give her a ride was fairly easy, and once Rachel had told her that she was meeting up with Jake, Cassie, and some of Jake's friends, her mom smiled. She had always seemed to like it when Rachel was sociable. Of course, Rachel didn't really think that her mom would have been quite so pleased if she'd known that the people her daughter was meeting with were part of a small guerilla army that was the only thing standing between Earth and not one but _two_ different factions of aliens determined to conquer it.

She sometimes wondered what the Radam's deal was: why _they_ hadn't seemed to be making any forays into the outside world. She didn't know exactly what the Radam were capable of, though; maybe they were waiting for something, whoever was commanding them holding their forces back for some reason or other.

Maybe she'd ask Shara about that sometime, Rachel mused, as she got out of her mom's car and kissed the woman goodbye. Making her way into the mall, Rachel headed for the food court. On her way there, she spotted Cassie.

Her friend was carrying a pair of newspapers under her left arm, and without hesitation Rachel moved more quickly to catch up with her. She already suspected what this particular meeting was going to be about, but seeing Cassie and her cargo all but confirmed it.

"Hey, Cassie," she said, smiling as she fell into step beside her oldest friend and the two of them meandered over to the table where most of the other Animorphs had settled themselves down. "Nice to see you made it."

She sometimes wondered if she could have found a way to invite Shara to come with them sometime, since the other girl had to spend almost all of her time cooped up in Cassie's barn otherwise and anyone stuck in that position would probably be going a bit stir-crazy after all this time. She would have been thinking of some way to invite Slade, too, but he didn't seem to be as effected by his and Shara's confinement as anyone else would have been in their situation. Slade was kind of a strange guy, all things considered.

Though no one could deny that he was good in a fight.

"Hi, Rachel," Cassie said, keeping up their usual pre-meeting act of not having entirely expected to meet each other in this place. "I'm glad to see you made it, too."

As they moved in closer to the table where the others were sitting, Rachel saw that every other member of the Animorphs seemed to be there; even Ax, who was looking off to his right like he was just waiting for someone else to come back. All of the others seemed to be waiting, too, but none of them were as obviously eager as the Andalite. Ax was in human morph, of course, or else he would have run the risk of starting either a panic or a shoot-out in the mall; possibly both at once, considering how many of the mall's patrons might be Controllers.

Finally standing in front of the table that the others had chosen to sit at, Rachel put down her load of newspapers and huffed in exaggerated annoyance.

"Well, that's just classic," she scoffed, pulling out a chair so she could sit down quickly.

All of the papers shared the same front-page picture, and they all had nearly the same headline: Schwarzenegger Real-Life Hero: Gives Mouth-to-Mouth to Drowning Man. One of them had a different, and slightly more amusing, variation: Terminator Becomes Resuscitator.


	11. Her Decision

"This society is way too celebrity-obsessed," she said. "It's _so_ superficial."

"Yeah," Cassie said, giving her a mocking look. "I hate that."

"We were lucky," Jake said seriously, drawing the attention of pretty much everyone at the table, with the obvious exception of Ax. "No one happened to snap any pictures of a flock of raptors carrying that guy to the water; no one happened to wonder what a dolphin was doing so far upstream from the ocean." Jake leaned in close, his eyes intense and serious in a way that Rachel hadn't usually seen them outside of missions. "And no one, that I've heard of, has so much as mentioned the fact that we had a _Teknoman_ flying up and out of the river."

"That man was lucky, too," Cassie pointed out.

"No way," Marco said dismissively, shaking his head. "_Lucky_ would have been getting mouth-to-mouth from Naomi Campbell."

"Where are the cinnamon buns?" Ax asked, looking all around the table and incidentally distracting Rachel from her search for the perfect, crushing retort to Marco. "Tobias said that he would get some. Cinnamon buns. Bun-zuh."

Neither Slade nor Shara were sitting with them at the table, of course: their groups had never been friends at school, and the Carter family was still listed as missing in any of the papers that bothered to mention them at all. The general consensus from the media was that the group, family and friends, had simply vanished. There were some speculations, mostly in tabloids where people wouldn't believe them, about what had actually _happened_ to them all.

Rachel had saved one of the more interesting clippings, one suggesting that the Carters and their fellow campers had been abducted by a flying saucer under the command of Elvis Presley's half-alien clone. The headline was funny for two reasons; the first because it was just so completely absurd, and the second because it was the closest that anyone had gotten to the truth.

The Radam might not travel around in flying saucers, but they were _definitely_ aliens.

"I wonder what happens to George Edelman now?" Cassie wondered aloud, bringing Rachel's attention back to the conversation at hand.

"Who?" she asked?

"The guy," Cassie said, rolling her eyes in mild exasperation. "The man in the papers. That man that you and Shara both helped to save, Rachel."

"Oh," Rachel said, blinking. "That was his name?"

"Yes," Cassie said, sounding a bit more annoyed. "It's been mentioned in all of the newspaper articles."

"Okay," Rachel said, shrugging. "Okay, so his name is George Edelman. Big deal."

"Rachel," Cassie said, leaning across the table so she could look her oldest and best friend more completely in the eyes. "You helped save this man's life; you and Shara. Without you two, the rest of us might not have seen him in time. If you hadn't decided to act, he'd probably have been splattered all over the concrete. A human life was saved yesterday. He might go on to cure cancer or something later. And you're telling me that you don't even remember his _name_?"

"Hey, wait a minute," Rachel said, after a momentary flash of guilt for not having done so. "This guy isn't anything to me; I don't even _know_ him. It's not like I'm responsible for him or anything."

Not knowing quite how Shara felt about the whole "unplanned rescue" thing, Rachel wasn't about to speak for her, but she figured that the other girl would feel pretty much the same; it wasn't like either of them could have just let the man die once they knew he was in danger.

"I don't know," Marco said, tilting his right hand back and forth as if he was weighing something in a scale. "Isn't it the Chinese who say that, if you save someone's life, they become your responsibility? Or maybe that was the Japanese. Or the Greeks? Well, it was someone. I saw it in a movie."

Rachel shrugged, beginning to feel slightly uncomfortable; she made a mental note to talk to Shara about what they'd both had a hand in yesterday. "It was mostly just a goof, you know? For me, at least. I just wanted to see if I _could_ do it. It was," Rachel paused for a moment, searching for the right word. "It was a challenge; that's it. A personal challenge."

Tobias returned to their table before anyone else could say something in response. He was carrying the very Cinnabon that Ax had been so excited about. It was a particularly large one, one of the largest they sold, and dripping with frosting and cinnamon.

A great deal of frosting and cinnamon.

Ax's eyes went wide at the sight of it, his mouth hanging open slightly in a mixture of anticipation and delight. It was kind of an odd experience for Rachel, and she wondered for a moment if any of the others felt the same way. Ax's human morph _had_, after all, been created from bits and pieces of four of them.

It was just weird, sometimes, seeing someone who looked so much like you doing something you'd never do.

Setting the plate and its arguably precious cargo down on the table, Tobias retook his seat and settled into it. "I figured that we could all have one bite each and then leave the rest for-"

Tobias trailed off, an expression of stunned amusement on his face. Rachel didn't blame him: Ax had just snatched up the entirety of what Tobias had just dropped off; the Cinnabon, plate, and plastic fork all in one go, and was even then in the process of stuffing them into his mouth. The bun itself, as well as the plate, and even the plastic fork were all in the process of being consumed by the overenthusiastic Andalite in his composite human-morph.

Pulling the fork out of his mouth so that he wouldn't end up choking on it, Rachel watched the spectacle along with five of her fellow Animorphs. It was definitely something to see; like watching a python trying to swallow a small pig. Only Ax didn't have the luxury of unhinging his jaw in this particular morph, though Rachel at least could tell that he would have probably liked to.

Once Ax had finished almost-literally stuffing his face, Rachel was the first to speak in the ensuing, stunned silence.

"George Edelman, huh?"

"Yeah," Jake confirmed. "But, I want everyone who can to keep an eye on TV and the newspapers for awhile, okay? If someone _did_ notice our... intervention... we want to know about it as quickly as we can. Mostly, we're going to have to hope George Edelman keeps his mouth shut."

"People will just figure he's nuts if he talks," Marco pointed out with his habitual bluntness. "No one's going to listen to a guy who tried to kill himself."

Rachel nodded; blunt as he could be, Marco was probably right in this case. No one was really inclined to take what someone said seriously after they had tried to kill themselves; especially something as utterly crazy-sounding as being rescued by a flock of birds. Birds that wouldn't have normally flocked together in the first place, at that.


	12. Truths

"Cass, do you mind if I come over to your house?" Rachel asked. "There's something I want to talk about."

She gave Cassie a certain look as she spoke, trying to wordlessly communicate who it was that she wanted to talk to. After all, mentioning the name of someone who was supposed to have disappeared, and especially implying that you knew just where they were, wouldn't be good for their security at all.

"Oh, sure," Cassie said, the expression on her face showing that she'd gotten Rachel's intended message loud and clear. "I'm sure my dad won't mind picking the both of us up."

"Good," she said, nodding sharply. "I'll go call my mom."

After the rest of the Animorphs who'd been present for this little briefing said their goodbyes and went their separate ways, Rachel tracked down a payphone and called her home. She was at least reasonably sure that her mom wouldn't have any problems with her going over to Cassie's for a bit, and while Rachel knew that she would have to come up with a plausible reason, she already had several in mind for times like this.

Besides, Cassie was one of her closest friends, it was only natural that she'd want to hang out with her when she could.

When she got through to her mother, Rachel wasn't surprised to hear the strain in the older woman's voice. Her mom took a lot of cases, after all. Talking over what she wanted to do, or at least what she was going to tell her mom that she wanted to do, Rachel soon had the permission she'd been looking for.

"She's fine with it," she reported to Cassie, when the two of them met up again.

"Good," the other girl said, nodding. "I tried to call my dad, but all I got was the answering machine. He's probably already on his way, so I'll explain things to him when he gets here."

"Thanks, Cass," Rachel said, as the two of them settled down on a bench to wait.

After about five minutes or so, Cassie's father arrived and Cassie explained that she had invited Rachel over to her house so that the two of them could talk. Rachel confirmed that she had told her mother her plans for the day, taking a vague sort of comfort in the fact that she actually _had_, and the three of them left the mall together. Even knowing that she was going to be able to talk to Shara when she made it to Cassie's house didn't make Rachel particularly enthusiastic about the drive up, though.

Cassie's dad did _not_ have a good singing voice.

Once the trip was over, and Rachel found that opening the window on her side up all the way actually _did_ do something to block out the noise, her, Cassie, and Cassie's dad all piled out of the pickup truck and made their way into the house. Rachel knew that this part was important for their cover, since the barn was mostly a place where people worked helping the sick animals, and no one but Cassie was particularly eager to do _that_, but she couldn't help wanting to talk to Shara sooner rather than later.

If there was anyone who'd be most likely to understand where she was coming from, it would have to be Shara; they'd both dove right into that situation without a look back, after all.

Once she, Cassie, and Cassie's parents were finished eating a snack and exchanging various small talk, Rachel happily said goodbye to them and turned her attention to her oldest friend. Only to see that Cassie was starting to prepare a couple of large sandwiches.

"You really think they're going to be that hungry?" she asked, keeping her voice low enough not to carry; she'd already guessed just who the extra food was intended for. Cassie _had_ asked for her help in the barn, after all.

"Both of them always seem to be hungry when they're not sleeping," Cassie answered, as the two of them left her house and made their way out to the barn. "I think it has something to do with what happened to them. What _they_ did."

"I guess that might make sense," Rachel said, inwardly fighting the urge to chuckle.

There was nothing inherently funny about the situation, and quite a few things that she could see were a pain in the butt, but it _was_ kind of weirdly amusing that there were _two_ groups that the Animorphs would have to call "they" or "them" for security. On the one hand, "they" could be the Yeerks, and on the other it could be the Radam. It was bound to cause some confusion sooner or later. She decided _not_ to tell Marco about it; there were enough lame jokes in the world already.

When the two of them had made their way into the barn, Rachel let Cassie proceed her into the hayloft. Sitting back as her old friend talked to Slade and Shara and then handed over the sandwiches that she had made, Rachel found that the siblings _were_ actually as hungry as Cassie had made them out to be. It was almost like watching Ax eat; well, maybe a _bit_ more restrained than the Andalite had ever been around food, but not by much.

Once the two of them had finished their food, and Slade had lay back down to rest, Rachel followed Cassie as she lead Shara over to a more secluded section of the hayloft. It was well hidden from anyone else who might come inside, like either of Cassie's parents, and as Rachel settled down facing both Cassie and Shara, she noticed that the other girl was starting to look a bit groggy.

When Shara yawned and shook herself the way Rachel remembered doing at times when she was trying to stay awake under difficult circumstances, Rachel leaned forward slightly.

"Hey, are you okay?" she asked, feeling a bit worried.

"I should be fine," Shara said, holding up her hand in front of her mouth as she yawned again. "Unless you want me to do something too strenuous, like go out for a jog with you or something," Shara said, with a wry sort of smile.

Rachel chuckled. "No, nothing like that," then, remembering just what it was that she'd come here for in the first place, she sat back up. "I wanted to ask you something, though."

"Oh? What is it?" Shara asked, running her fingers through her pale blonde hair in an obvious effort to straighten it.

"That man we helped rescue yesterday; his name was George Edelman," she said, saying his name almost as an afterthought. She figured Cassie wouldn't be too happy with her if she forgot the man's name while she was talking about him; especially after the talk they'd been having earlier. "Anyway, what did you think of him?"

"I don't honestly know _what_ to think of him," Shara said, bringing her right knee up to her chest so she could curl her arm around it. Her eyes went a bit distant, as if she wasn't really speaking to anyone else in the room anymore. "He must have been in a lot of pain, if he thought suicide was his only way out."

"Suicide is never really the answer, though," Cassie said.

Rachel agreed; there were a lot of good reasons why suicide was called the coward's way out, and not just because whoever did it didn't have to deal with their problems when they killed themselves. Judging by the way Shara laughed, something that sounded more like a dog barking than any sound a human would normally make, she didn't really agree.

"Oh, I don't know," she said, leaning forward slightly so that her bangs fell over her eyes. "If what you're dealing with is too much, and you know that you'll never be able to escape it, I don't see any shame in dropping it."

"That's-" Cassie started to say, then paused. "What do you mean, Shara?"

"Sometimes, I think-" she shook her head. "It's stupid; I really shouldn't be thinking about it. Was that all you wanted to ask me about, Rachel?"

The look on Shara's face made it clear that she didn't want to talk about what was bothering her, which was just fine with Rachel. Everyone was entitled to their own secrets, thoughts that they didn't want to share with anyone; things that were too personal _to_ share, and she wasn't going to pry into anyone else's anymore than she'd let someone else pry into hers. Cassie, though, obviously wasn't going to let something like what Shara had just said go like that.

"What were you going to say before, Shara?" Cassie asked, looking worried.

"Nothing, Cassie," the other girl said, smiling like she didn't have a care in the world; she was good, Rachel noted. If she hadn't been right there while Shara was talking, _she_ might have actually believed that Shara didn't have anything to hide. "Thank you so much for the food; it was delicious."

"You're welcome," Cassie said, not seeming deterred in the least. "Now, would you mind telling me what's going on with you? You didn't really mean what you said about dying, did you?"

Shara sighed, the carefree look vanishing from her face as if it had never been there at all. "You don't give up easily, do you?"

"Not where my friends are concerned, no," Cassie said solemnly.

"Your friend," Shara echoed, and then chuckled softly; and kind of bitterly, too, Rachel thought. "Maybe you shouldn't think of me that way; it's not safe."

"_Safe_?" And now it was Cassie's turn to repeat something _Shara_ had said, Rachel thought; she didn't know if either of them would see the humor in the situation, especially under the circumstances, but _she_ thought it was kind of funny. "What do you man, it's not safe? You might be a bit different than us, Shara, but I wouldn't say you're _dangerous_."

"I'm more dangerous than you think, Cassie," Shara said. From anyone else, including her Rachel admitted, those words would probably have been some kind of a threat; but Shara sounded more depressed than anything as she said them. "If Darkon manages to connect with my mind, even for just a few seconds, he's going to be able to find out where I am, and maybe even where I've been. Then none of you would be safe. That's why," she paused, turning to look back over her right shoulder at Slade. "It probably would have been better if all of us had died back there. At least then he wouldn't have had any forces on this planet."


	13. The story told

"You can't be serious," Cassie said, scooting forward so she could gently take Shara's hands in both of hers. Rachel, still a bit weirded-out by the subjects being discussed, decided to let Cassie handle things from here; she'd always been better at this kind of thing.

XXXX

She hadn't known; that was all Cassie could think as Shara turned and raised her eyes to face her again: she hadn't known what was going on with Shara. She hadn't even suspected that there _was_ something going on. She didn't like what that might have said about her, that she didn't even think that something might be troubling a person that she saw three times every day; that she hadn't even thought to ask if there was something bothering the other girl.

And now, finding out that Shara thought that everyone else would have been better off if she and Slade had _died_... Well, it was clear that she had been neglecting her obligations as far as being Shara's friend was concerned, and right now she had to focus on fixing that.

"Well, Darkon aside," she said, suppressing a shudder as she thought about _him_ again; there were reasons that she didn't want to use her Shara morph again, and not all of them were the obvious problems that morphing another sapient being brought up. "Idon't think that any of us here would have been better off if you and Slade weren't with us. You've both done a lot of good here, you know? I think we might even be able to _win_ this fight with your help. You and Slade have done a lot of good."

"Against the Yeerks, maybe," Shara allowed, ducking her head slightly so that that her bangs shaded her eyes again. "I don't know what any of us are going to be able to do when Darkon starts mobilizing _his_ forces."

"Well, I guess that depends on how many forces he actually has, really," she said, trying to be optimistic. She knew that Slade and Shara were both incredibly powerful in their own right, she couldn't help but know after all she'd seen them do, but the situation couldn't be as hopeless as Shara was making it out to be. After all, anyone who heard about the Yeerks and all of _their_ soldiers might think that the Animorphs' situation was hopeless, and they'd done a lot of good already. "Do you think you'd be up to telling us, Shara?"

She wasn't going to start demanding information from someone who was as obviously distraught as Shara so clearly felt, but the information that Shara _was_ willing to give would probably be useful to all of them; know your enemy and all.

"During the camping trip, when we stumbled onto Darkon's base, the only ones there were my family and a few friends," Shara said, clenching her fists and biting her lip as she finished speaking. "My father, my eldest brother Conrad, Ness and Cain," she said, looking over at Slade for a long moment before turning her attention back to them. "And my younger brother, Raven. Cain's friend Fritz was there, too, along with Devon, Ryan, and Cindy, who were kind of friends with all of us." Shara took a deep breath and let it out slowly, as if she was trying to prepare herself to say something difficult; Cassie could relate, it _couldn't_ be easy talking about losing the people close to you. "I don't know how many of them survived the transformation process, but I think it was at least five."

"You know," Rachel said, speaking up for the first time in awhile. "Normally, I'd say that that doesn't sound so bad, just having five people to worry about, but if these guys are all like you and Slade, I think we just might be in trouble."

Cassie agreed, but there was something else bothering her; something about what Shara had said before. "What do you mean, survived the transformation process, Shara?"

"Anyone who's not up to the Radam's standards when they're captured is killed during the transformation," Shara barked a morbid laugh. "And not quickly, either."

"_What_?" she demanded, shocked; she'd known that the Radam were bad, anyone who'd gotten even the faintest glimpse of Darkon's mind couldn't _help_ but know that, but she'd been thinking that they were at the same level as the Yeerks. This was... this was _horrible_.

"Imagine the worst kind of pain you've ever had in your life, then imagine something a thousand times worse, and you might be at least one tenth of the way to imagining what anyone who gets forced through the Teknoprocess feels," Shara said, her eyes distant but her face set in the hardest expression that Cassie had ever seen on someone who wasn't either Jake or Rachel. "No one without the qualities the Radam want in their soldiers ever survives it, and no one who goes through it ever really comes out the way they were before. I don't know what that says about me and Slade, or anyone who actually managed to survive it, but I'm fairly sure it's not particularly good."


	14. Finding the way

"That's stupid," Rachel broke in. "Just because you survived when some other people didn't, that doesn't _mean_ anything. Besides, with all the help you guys have given us, I'm _glad_ that the two of you managed to make it through." Rachel paused, leaning back on her hands with a relaxed sort of air. "I think it'd be great if we had a few more people like you and Slade, personally."

"Thanks, I think," Shara said, sounding as if even _she_ didn't know if she was being sincere or sarcastic.

"I don't know if having more people like you would really be better for us," she mused aloud, thinking of all the food that she'd had to bring for them both over the course of their stay. "I mean, it's great if someone else manages to escape from Darkon, but I don't know where we'd manage to hide someone else that eats like you or Slade."

"Good point," Shara said, with a soft, rueful laugh. Then she yawned, rubbing her mouth with the back of her hand. "Was there anything else you wanted to ask me?"

"No, I think that's all," she said, looking to Rachel for confirmation even as her best friend nodded. "Why don't you get to sleep now, Shara? You look tired."

"I think that's a pretty good idea," the other girl said, yawning again as she crawled her way back over to where Slade was sleeping. "Thanks again for all the food, by the way," Shara said, facing Cassie as she settled down next to her brother.

"You're welcome," she said, pitching her voice lower so she wouldn't have too much of a chance of waking Slade up. Though the both of them seemed to be pretty deep sleepers, she still didn't want to chance it.

As she and Rachel climbed down from the hayloft, Cassie couldn't help but reflect on the conversation that she'd had with Shara. She was still disappointed in herself for not noticing how the other girl was doing, for not even suspecting the fact that Shara was actually feeling that she and Slade would have been better off dead. Anyone else would have probably said that she'd just had too much on her mind otherwise, or something else to excuse the fact that she clearly hadn't been paying enough attention to how Shara was feeling.

Cassie had never been one to make excuses for her of behavior, though; she certainly wasn't going to let herself off the hook for this. She'd just have to make sure that Shara was doing all right from now on, not just taking it for granted that as long as the other girl had food and shelter, she would be perfectly fine; Slade might be, since she'd never gotten the impression that there was more to him than met the eye, but that clearly wasn't the case for Shara.

When she and Rachel made it back to the ground, Cassie noticed that her old friend seemed to be thinking deeply about something.

"Cass, I didn't want to bring this up before, since you and Shara were clearly talking about something a lot more important," Rachel said, as Cassie stopped walking so she could give her old friend her full attention. "But, who was that 'Darkon' guy that you both mentioned? I've never heard any of the others mention him."

"I don't think anyone else really knows about him, Rach," she said, leaning slightly against one of the long tables that held the cages with their cargo of sick or injured animals. "He's the leader of the Radam contingent hidden on Earth. I think he might actually be the one that brought them all here in the first place."

"So, he's another of the bad guys that we're going to have to deal with," Rachel said, not sounding particularly worried. "All right."

Holding her old friend back as she started to walk off again, Cassie sighed. "I don't think it's going to be quite as simple as that," she said, knowing that it was best if Rachel knew what they were going to have to deal with once the Radam started making their move. Whenever _that_ turned out to be. "Darkon's the one in command of all the Teknomen, and for the Radam that means he's the strongest out of all of them. You and I have both seen what Slade and Shara can do," she said, thinking back on the carnage that Slade had wreaked on the Fenestre mansion when he'd been in that armored form of his, before she recalled that Rachel _hadn't_ seen that particular battle. "And that was only one of them. Darkon _has_ to be worse, or else he wouldn't be able to command their forces."

She didn't know if that was _entirely_ true, since when she had morphed into Shara she'd felt an almost instinctive urge to seek Darkon out, but she also knew that she couldn't let Rachel start underestimating him if they were going to have to deal with him and his Teknomen in the future. She didn't want any of her friends to suffer any more than they already did.

"Okay, so he's a _really_ bad guy," Rachel said, nodding. "We still have those two on our side; I'm sure they'll be able to handle whatever he can come up with."

Rachel sounded so confidant about that, so sure of herself and all of them, that Cassie didn't want to say anything else to dissuade her. Rachel always seemed so sure of herself, so confidant that all of the Animorphs could handle whatever came their way, that she inspired all of the others to do things that they might not have been able to do otherwise. Cassie was glad that they had her; not only for the fact that she and Rachel were close friends and she would have hated having to lie to the other girl, but because Rachel was _Rachel_.

As they left the barn, Cassie resisting the urge to look back over her shoulder at the place where Slade and Shara were sleeping, Cassie sighed briefly; she'd have to make a point of spending a bit more time with Shara than she usually did, at least when she could safely take the time to, so probably during the times when she brought the other girl her third meal of the day. It was really the only time she could spend a bit of extra time in the barn without her parents calling her on it. The only time when she wouldn't _really_ have to lie about what she was doing.


	15. Truth and appearance

As she and Cassie said goodbye for the day, Cassie's father having given her a ride back to her house, Rachel thought about the things she'd learned today. She'd never really thought about Shara having problems about what had happened to her, and never about the other girl thinking she might have been better off dead. Or, not her personally, but that the world itself would have been better off without her.

She didn't buy that; with the kind of power that Shara had demonstrated on more than one occasion, it was obvious that all of the Animorphs were better off _with_ Shara and Slade on their side; now all she had to do was convince Shara that she was right, since Rachel wasn't about to leave one of her friends with such a messed-up idea about their own lives.

Of course, she was going to have to get to know Shara better if she was going to be able to do anything at all to help her, but that was probably something that she should have already been trying to do before, considering the fact that Shara and her brother were obviously going to be with them for the long haul. Yawning as she made her way up to her room, having finished a light dinner with her family, Rachel settled herself into bed with a promise that she would go visit Shara after school tomorrow.

XXXX

The next day, with yet another day of school safely behind her, Rachel told her mom that she was going to be visiting Cassie. Smiling as her mom offered to drive her, and figuring that it was safe enough since she really _was_ going to be visiting with Cassie at least some of the time, Rachel agreed. Anything to be spared Cassie's dad's taste in music.

The drive itself was fairly boring, since neither she nor her mom were much for talking during car trips no matter how long they were, but once they arrived at Cassie's house Rachel felt better. Shara was there, waiting just out of sight in the barn, and Rachel was determined to make the other girl see reason come hell or high water. Thanking her mom for the ride, she turned and walked up to the door as her mom drove off.

Knocking, she spoke with Cassie's dad briefly before the man let her in. Finding out that Cassie was working in the barn, though probably not for the exact same reasons that her dad thought she was, Rachel thanked him for the information and told him that she would go in to help, so Cassie could get out sooner. She knew that saying that would mean that she wouldn't have as much time to convince Shara not to think stupid things like what she'd talked about yesterday, but given the fact that she was going to be staying around for at least a few hours, Rachel was sure that she could convince Cassie's dad that Cassie had been showing her something particularly interesting if the two of them ended up taking a bit longer than expected.

Making her way into the barn, Rachel saw that Cassie was about halfway up the ladder that lead into the hayloft; that was pretty much perfect.

Following her best friend up the ladder, Rachel paused for a moment as Cassie climbed off. The two of them nodded to each other as Cassie turned around, and Cassie moved aside as Rachel herself climbed all the way up into the hayloft.

"I didn't expect you to come all the way out here just to help me with this, Rach," Cassie said, looking solemn just before she smiled. "But, I'm really glad you did."

"No problem, Cass," she said, smiling.

Watching as Cassie gave Slade and Shara their food, and smiling slightly in response to the vaguely curious look Slade gave her, she sat down to watch. She'd never really _watched_ either of them eat before, but with the way Cassie had talked about it, she'd gotten the impression that it was pretty out of the ordinary. And now, sitting here watching the siblings as they scarfed down the food that Cassie had gotten for them, Rachel could see why Cassie had brought it up in conversation.

Sure, the two of them had pretty good table manners, or at least enough that her mom wasn't likely to call them on anything if under some weird circumstances they were ever invited over to her house, but it was almost painfully obvious that the both of them were ravenous. She didn't know _why_ both of them were so hungry, but then again she didn't really know why Shara had seemed so tired while the three of them had been talking yesterday, either.

Right then and there, however, Rachel made a silent promise that she would ask about that. It couldn't be any more difficult to explain than the things they had _already_ talked about, Rachel knew.

Once the siblings were done with their respective meals, Slade yawned deeply, then he laid down right there and flipped the blanket that he and Shara were both obviously using over himself. Rachel was surprised enough by the action that she didn't say anything, but Cassie, oddly enough, seemed to be expecting something like that.

"Let's go somewhere out of earshot," Shara suggested, quietly enough that Rachel had to strain a bit to hear it; Shara always tended to speak a bit more softly than Rachel was used to. "Slade told me that we nearly woke him up, yesterday."

Rachel hadn't thought that any of them had been talking _that_ loudly, but Shara also seemed completely sincere about what she was saying. So, she got up without another word, following Shara and Cassie to the other side of the hayloft where the three of them settled back down.

"Are you sure this is going to be okay, Cass?" she asked, knowing that Cassie wouldn't have told her parents about Slade and Shara living in the barn; it was obvious, both since the Animorphs didn't know just who they could really trust with their secret, and because Cassie herself was still going to so much trouble to hide them. "We're pretty exposed out here, you know."

"I know," she said, nodding. "We'll have to continue our main conversation later," she said, then looked back over her right shoulder at the main room of the barn. "I just wanted to make sure that we'd be out of Slade's hair while we talked. Shara," Cassie continued, looking back at the other girl. "Can you talk to Slade when he wakes up? Find out if this is far enough away for him not to be disturbed?"

"Yeah," Shara said, nodding. "I can do that." After she'd finished speaking, Shara yawned almost as deeply as Slade had, just before he'd gone to sleep. "I think I just might need a nap, first, though," Shara said, sounding rueful.

"I thought you might," Cassie said, smiling as she put her hand on Shara's right shoulder.

Rachel was a bit confused by the whole thing; why would Shara need a nap when she hadn't really been _doing_ anything? Come to think of it, why did _Slade_ conk out so fast? Neither of them really seemed to have anything to _do_, besides hide out in Cassie's barn, try not to be discovered by Cassie's parents, and go on the occasional mission with the Animorphs.

But, by the time she'd managed to think of those questions, Cassie was climbing down the ladder, and Shara had already settled herself down for a nap next to Slade. So, Rachel figured that she would ask Cassie what was going on with Shara and Slade. Her best friend probably _would_ know, Rachel figured, since she was the one who took care of them and was around them for long stretches of the day.

"Hey," she called, once the two of them were standing together on the main floor of the barn. "Cass, do you know what's going on with those two? I wanted to ask Shara, you know, about why she and Slade seemed to be so tired the last two days, but I didn't think of it until we were leaving."

"It's not something Shara likes to talk about," Cassie said, sounding morose. "I mean, if it'd happened to me, I wouldn't either, so I guess I can understand," Cassie shook her head slowly, seeming to bring herself back to the present with that action. "She says it's something to do with what the Radam did to her; something about how they work, or something like that. She didn't really like talking about it, so I didn't pry."

"Oh," she said, considering what Cassie had and hadn't said about just what had happened to Shara.

Unspoken between them was the request for Rachel not to pry into just what it _was_ that the Radam had done to Shara and her brother; and the rest of her family, if Rachel remembered the details of their conversation from yesterday right.

She wasn't going to pry if neither Cassie nor Shara wanted to talk about it, but that _didn't_ mean she wasn't going to make an effort to find out just what was going on with the other blonde.

XXXX

It was kind of strange, Saber reflected, the way that Gunnar always seemed to be a bit leery around him. He knew his own reasons for not wanting to spend time around any of the Teknomen that Darkon had created, but if he hadn't known better, Saber might have almost thought that Gunnar _shared_ those reasons or something. _On the other hand, maybe I _don't_ know better,_ Saber mused, as he continued to carefully pick through his backpack for something to eat.

It was kind of a weird thought, that Gunnar wasn't really any more loyal to the Radam's cause than Saber himself was, but Saber still wondered if it could possibly be true. It would be a hell of a coup if it was; having someone else on his side could only help with... whatever the hell it was that he was ultimately going to be able to do to hinder Darkon and his forces in their efforts at conquering the Earth.

Finally settling on the granola bars that he had packed for himself before they'd all set off on their fateful camping trip, Saber pulled out three and settled down on the ground next to his pack to eat. Nothing much seemed to be happening at the moment, except for whatever it was that had had Gunnar so agitated however many days ago it'd been that his fellow Teknoman had returned from the errand that Darkon had sent him on. Saber sometimes wondered just that that errand had actually _been_, but he knew better than to waste time asking.

Gunnar wasn't likely to tell him, with the way he seemed to feel about Saber, and Darkon didn't bear thinking about; Warlords weren't to be questioned by their soldiers, after all.

Finishing the last of his food, or what would have to pass for such while he was still down here, Saber shoved the crumpled wrappers into a pouch on his pack that he'd been using for that express purpose even _before_ he and the rest of his family had fallen into this dank, alien-infested hellhole. Saber might have hated the Radam with a fury that he hadn't thought himself capable of before, but they weren't going to be here forever. And he _had_ been brought up not to litter.

Standing back up, already starting to feel the familiar lethargy beginning to settle over him again, Saber reluctantly made his way back to the teknopod that had been effectively reserved for his personal use. He didn't particularly _want_ to climb back inside that extraterrestrial Venus flytrap, but Darkon would start to suspect something about him if he didn't. Saber knew he couldn't afford that.

There were only two fates awaiting a traitorous Teknoman; neither of them good.

Stripping off his clothes as he got within range of the small tangle of vines, the same vines that were even then starting to uncoil themselves and reach for him, Saber folded the garments and set them down within the small space occupied by the vines. He still wasn't entirely used to the way the vines would coil around his clothes, hiding them from sight the way they were doing now.

Forcing those kinds of thoughts, and all of the other doubts he was starting to have about the tentative plans he'd been making for dealing with this new situation that he found himself in, Saber climbed back into the warm, slick environment of the teknopod. The interior membranes were soft to the touch, and the liquid inside had the consistency of warm, half-melted Jello. Under any other circumstances, that combination would have deeply, truly, utterly disgusted him; however, once he was actually _inside_ the teknopod, Saber always found that he was a great deal more comfortable than he was in what could loosely be termed the outside world.

If nothing else, _that_ served to remind him just how wide the gulf between Cain Carter and Teknoman Saber actually was; not to mention freaking him out whenever he thought about it too much.


	16. The how of things

As he awoke from his meditative trance, having been monitoring the growth of the small crop of Nikhau he had cultivating, Darkon reflected on the odd things that had happened to make this course of action appealing to him. Nikhau were, as all Radam knew, used for patrolling the territories that the Radam had conquered through the use of either their Teknomen or the huge Galigau beasts that were bred to shatter the defenses of planets that were known to be particularly resistant.

However, the simple fact was that he did not have the energy needed to produce even _one_ Galigau beast; even the three Nikhau that he was cultivating forced him to divert the stored power needed to create more Teknomen into their bodies. It was a troublesome situation, and he would often find himself wondering in his more introspective moments if there was another Warlord who had been forced into adopting these tactics. Forced into waiting and hiding like this.

Personally, given what he knew of the Radam and their methods, he doubted it. Most of the planets that his fellow Warlords had been assigned to were more advanced than this one – which _did_ make them somewhat more dangerous to deal with, yes – but then his fellow Warlords were either in possession of a probe ship and all of the energy-reserves that such a possession implied, or they had the good fortune to have easy access to a power-plant. Radam trees _could_ be made to draw energy from their own chemical processes, yes, but it was a slow and inefficient process; it also required him to prioritize more than he personally wished to.

His experiences with the Warlord who had originally brought him into the ranks of the Radam – Omega – provided Darkon with knowledge of how a Radam invasion of a target planet was _meant_ to go. However, Darkon was still forced to concede that Omega and his forces had made planetfall in one of the power stations that supplied energy to the inhabitants of Chelna, his former city. Given what he was forced to deal with during his own efforts on this Earth planet, Darkon often found himself wondering if even Lord Omega himself would have been able to conquer Navris so easily if he and his forces had been operating under the constraints that he was forced to contend with.

He was inclined to doubt it, sometimes; even with all of their power, Teknomen were still in need of rest and nourishment if they were to be an effective fighting force.

XXXX

As her mom drove the both of them back home, Rachel turned over what Shara had been saying to her and Cassie in her head. Apparently, the Radam were even worse than she'd thought, being able to reach out and control their enslaved soldiers – Teknomen, which were pretty much like super-powerful versions of human-Controllers – remotely with their minds. It was really creepy to think about someone being able to do that, but the fact that their eyes glowed when they were using their telepathy to communicate meant that that kind of control would be obvious to anyone who knew what they were looking at.

Heck, even if someone _didn't_ really know what they were looking at, the sight of someone whose eyes were glowing in weird colors would be a big tip-off that _something_ was up.

Another thing that made the Radam a bit less scary than the Yeerks – though not by much, considering what they could _do_ – was the fact that a Radam Teknoman was easily distinguished from a normal person by the red irises of their eyes, and the fact that the eyes themselves glowed subtly in low light. This would make it a heck of a lot easier to tell who was working for the Radam and who wasn't, just by looking at them. At least the Radam couldn't hide behind normal people or just blend into a crowd, the way the Yeerks could.

Another thing that set the Radam apart, making them easier to cope with than the Yeerks in some ways, was the fact that all Teknomen – according to Shara, who _was_ a Teknoman, so she had to know what she was talking about – could sense each other over short distances, or longer depending on how hard they were concentrating on locating what they were sensing. Sure, that would only really work for Shara or Slade, but it was still yet another advantage that Rachel was happy to have.

When her and her mother made it back to their house, Rachel bid the other woman goodnight after telling her that she had had dinner with Cassie and her family. It was even true this time; that food had been really good, and she'd had an interesting talk with Shara over the leftovers. She might have been okay with lying to her mom when it was necessary for the mission, necessary for the Animorphs' survival, but Rachel was always a bit relieved when she could tell the truth; if only because thinking up all of those stories got kind of tiring sometimes.

Making her way up the stairs, she yawned widely and then stopped by her sisters' room to say goodnight. After everything that had happened today, Rachel was _more _than ready to spend some quality time with her bed and blankets. Finally back in her room at last, Rachel changed into her pajamas and quietly settled down to sleep.


	17. Choices made

When Friday afternoon had rolled around, Rachel had indulged herself is a way that she hadn't done in some time: with an after-school nap. Then, once she'd actually felt _rested_, Rachel had stretched and hauled herself out of bed. It was something she didn't get to enjoy nearly as much as she had in the old days; weekends and late afternoons, after all, were the prime time for Animorph missions.

Now, though, she was starting to feel a bit hungry again, and so, toeing on a pair of fluffy, well-worn slippers, Rachel made her way down to the kitchen.

The kitchen that still hadn't been entirely fixed yet from her little morphing escapade with the crocodile; the kitchen that had been remodeled from its old look into something like what she'd sometimes seen on TV shows. Making her way past the island, which their old kitchen didn't have but which her mother had always wanted, Rachel shook her head. She still felt kinda guilty about the builder being blamed for the collapse, and for his feeling so guilty and scared about what he'd done that he was willing to do all the work for free.

Still, it wasn't as if she could actually _tell_ anyone that the reason the house had collapsed in on itself was because she'd had an allergic reaction to the crocodile DNA she'd acquired, one that had caused her to morph out of control until she'd ended up going into a full-blown African Elephant in her bedroom. At least not without compromising the Animorphs' security and risking exposing the entire war effort to the Yeerks.

Putting those thoughts out of her mind as she continued to dig through the refrigerator, in search of the small, white container of Chinese food from the last time that they had ordered home-delivery of the stuff, Rachel began to frown. She wasn't finding it. Most of the other boxes of leftovers were there, some of them obviously missing more than a few bites, but the one she'd been looking for was gone entirely.

There was really only one explanation for this.

"Jordan! JORDAN!" she shouted, not particularly caring who she woke up at this point. "Jordan, you little thief!"

"What?"

Turning away from the refrigerator, momentarily forgetting about anything else in her eagerness to see this particular thief punished for what she had done, Rachel slammed right into the new kitchen island. Angrier now, and with nothing but a bruise on her hip to show for it, Rachel growled under her breath and stuck her right pointer finger at her younger sister's face.

"You! You ate my Szechuan shrimp! I was saving it for later. I want it. I want it right now!"

"Rachel, I took your stupid shrimp yesterday," Jordan said, not intimidated in the slightest by something that would have cowed her on the spot not so long ago. "And I threw it out."

"What?!" she demanded, seething. "You threw out my Szechuan shrimp? You're _always_ doing something with my leftovers, and I'm getting sick of it!"

"It was already a week old, _duh_," Jordan said, with the slow, pitying shake of her head that Rachel herself could remember using on people who were being particularly stupid. "It was too old, _duh_. It would have made you barf up your kidneys, _duh_. Shrimp doesn't exactly stay good forever, _duh_. And oh, by the way, did I mention, _duh_?"

"You should have asked me first!" Rachel snapped back, in no particular mood to be reasonable about things.

"Okay, Rachel," Jordan said, in what Rachel could swear was some kind of an imitation of her own talking-to-morons tone. "Should I have thrown out your rancid, bacteria-crawling, moldy leftovers, like Mom _asked_ me to, or should I have left them for you to eat so you'd end up having to get your stomach pumped?"

Seething, and all the while knowing that there was no real, logical argument that she could make in the face of that, a fact which made her almost as annoyed as not being able to come up with a particularly crushing comeback, Rachel settled for a scathing glare. "I'll let it go, this time."

"Thank you," Jordan said, rolling her eyes. "Thank you, Queen Rachel. I'm so _glad_ you'll let me live."

Before she could begin to think up a crushing retort to _that_, Rachel saw her and Jordan's – and Sara's, but the younger girl wasn't home at the moment – mother coming into the kitchen with a pair of briefcases held at her sides. One of them was normal-sized, while the other one was about half-again as big. Even as Rachel wondered in a vague sort of way what case her mother was working on, the older woman hefted both briefcases up and set them down on the counter in front of her.

Rachel noticed then that her mother looked pretty tired; not an uncommon occurrence given her line of work, but still something Rachel took notice of all the same. Mom was the kind of person who would probably have been working constantly even if her lower position in the law firm where she worked _hadn't_ made that kind of thing necessary. Or, at least that was the impression that Rachel got whenever her mother _was_ home.

The woman grinned at them all, clearly inviting her and Jordan to share in some kind of triumph or private joke; maybe even both. "Hey! Congratulate me, I'm a celebrity. Did you girls eat? How was school? Where's Sara? And don't tell me she's at Tisha's house. Every time she comes home from there, I end up buying her another Barbie."

"School was fine," Rachel said, leaving it at that. "We haven't had dinner," she said, changing the subject before her stomach could change it for her. "You want me to make something?"

"Or we could order out," Jordan said, her entire demeanor smug. "Rachel would like some puss-oozing, rotten shrimp."

"Mom! Mom!" Sara shouted, charging into the room through the back door like a speeding car; or a rampaging elephant. "Tisha says they have a lawyer Barbie! A lawyer Barbie. Just like you!"

"So, what's this about being a celebrity?" she asked, as she saw her mother struggling not to roll her eyes at Sara's antics.

"Oh, well I was mostly kidding about _that_," Mom said, a look of amusement on her face. "You know that guy who was in the papers a few days ago? The one who was rescued by Arnold Schwarzman? He was on CNN and the local news."

"Schwarzenegger?" she asked, curious.

"No, the man he rescued," Mom corrected. "Anyway, guess what? I'm his lawyer. His family is saying he's incompetent. They want to-"

"Incompetent?" Jordan interrupted. "Is that where you have to wear those adult diapers?"

"No, honey," Mom said gently. "Not incontinent. They're alleging he's incompetent. Not able to look after his own affairs. That's what they allege."

"Nuts," Rachel translated for the benefit of her two younger sisters. "Wacko. _Allegedly _wacko."

"Don't say wacko," her mom said, looking as if the word itself was painful to hear. "Mentally unbalanced will do fine. Anyway, his family wants to have him institutionalized permanently."

"So, what are _you_ supposed to do?" she asked, not really seeing a way that her mother could help this guy. "Prove he's not crazy? I mean, he is, right? He jumped off a _building_. That's not something sane people do."

For a moment Rachel reflected on what Shara had said to her, but then she put it out of her mind; the two situations weren't even _remotely_ similar, and besides that she wasn't going to let Shara keep thinking that way, anyway.

"Lawyer Barbie could save him," Sara said, folding her arms confidently.

"Actually, it's a bit worse than just that," her mom said, a worried, pitying expression on her face as she gathered Sara up into her arms. "Apparently, this poor man thinks he has an alien living in his head." Rachel's heart pounded; three loud beats that she was almost surprised that no one else heard, before all but stopping entirely. "He calls them Yerks, or Yorks; something like that."

Holding onto her composure with both hands, not wanting to give anything away that might endanger her, the other Animorphs, or anyone else in her family, Rachel shrugged.

"Well, that's kind of weird," she said, deliberately casual. "No wonder his family thinks he's wacko; I mean, aliens that live in your _head_? Come _on_."

"I know," Mom said, shaking her head as if she pitied the man; Rachel couldn't tell if it was real or an act. "What I _don't_ know is just how I'm going to be able to represent him if he keeps insisting on telling that absurd story. No one in their right mind would ever believe it, but from all the material I've read on the case, it seems like that's his story and he's sticking to it. I just don't know what I'm going to do about him yet."

"I'm sure you'll figure something out, Mom," Jordan said, smiling. "You always do."

"And Lawyer Barbie could help you!" Sara said cheerfully.

"Thanks, girls," Mom said, with a wry smile at Sara. Then, clapping her hands together briskly, she swept them all with her gaze. "Well, let's not think about that anymore; I'm sure we're all hungry. Rachel, did you really want Chinese food tonight?"

"Actually," she said, rolling her eyes at Jordan; her younger sister stuck out her tongue. "I think I'm more in the mood for pizza, now."

"Ooh, pizza!" Sara cheered, swinging her arms happily. "Sounds great."

"All right," Mom said, nodding sharply. "We've got two votes for pizza; Jordan, you're the tie-breaker."

"I think pizza would be cool," Jordan said, then Rachel saw her younger sister smirking. "Just so long as it isn't all rotten and covered in mold."

"I don't think they actually deliver it _that_ way," she said, rolling her eyes at Jordan.

"All right, you two," Mom said, giving them both a fish-eyed look. "No bickering before dinner."

"Yes, Mom," she and Jordan both answered in unison.


	18. Gathering

As the four of them made their way over to the table, three of them settling down around it while Mom made her way over to the phone to order their dinner, Rachel propped her head up on her right fist. It was her traditional thinking pose when she was sitting at any table, and her family knew better than to interrupt her when she was trying to think. And she most _definitely _didn't want to be interrupted now of all times.

It was obvious to her that the others needed to know about what George Edelman had said; anything to do with the Yeerks and their activities wasn't something that the Animorphs could just afford to ignore, even through it was probably going to be as dangerous as any of their other missions to date. She didn't know just _how_ it would turn out to be so dangerous, but she'd come to expect a certain level of danger in all of their missions.

This probably wasn't going to be the one to break _that_ trend, no matter how innocuous it seemed at first.

With dinner finished and the leftovers stowed in the fridge, Rachel made her way back up to her room, thinking about how they were going to be able to deal with this new situation all the way. It was going to involve a trip to the nut house, for one. Kind of a strange idea, that, since all of the Controllers she had experience with were all so completely and utterly dedicated to secrecy for their cause.

Briefly wondering just what it was that had made this particular Controller blow his cover so badly, or how his host had managed to gain enough control over himself to do that, Rachel climbed into bed and closed her eyes; there would be plenty of time to think about things like that tomorrow, and if she was lucky, she might even have the chance to get some answers.

XXXX

Making her way into the barn with the food that she had prepared for Shara and Slade, Cassie sighed as she remembered again what her father had confronted her about just last night. He'd thought that she was sneaking table-scraps to the animals; he'd obviously noticed the food that had been missing from the kitchen, and when he'd made her promise not to do it anymore, she'd felt almost unbearably guilty. Sure, she'd made a promise not to bring anymore table-scraps, but the fact that she hadn't been doing it in the first place, combined with the fact that she still had to take food in there to support Slade and Shara, made her feel worse than she would have if she really _had_ been sneaking table-scraps to the animals.

There were times that she would wish that she could ask one of the others to take care of the siblings, but there was really no way to do that without risking the safety of the whole war-effort. Jake had Tom to deal with, trying to work around the Controller in his own family to make sure that he didn't get any of them caught and killed, or worse. The others had pretty much the same problem. Combine that with the lack of unobserved space in most of their houses, and it was clear to Cassie that she _was_ really the only one that either of the siblings could depend on to take care of them.

Of course, there _were_ the Chee, but that wasn't really possible for a number of reasons; the foremost being that Slade and Shara were an integral part of the war effort, and they needed to stay close to remain in it.

As she sat down in front of the two siblings, watching the way they ate, Cassie found herself wondering just what would happen once the Radam had started to make their move. She'd seen the kind of destruction that a _single_ Teknoman could leave in their wake; she'd helped to unleash it, in fact, and the only thing that really made her feel guilty about doing that was the fact that she didn't feel guilty at all.

Banishing those thoughts from her mind with a bit of a mental effort, Cassie noticed that the siblings had finished the last of their meal and Shara had started packing away the dishes that she had brought with her into the bag that she had carried them in with.

"Thanks, Shara," she said, smiling at the other girl's consideration. "I really appreciate that."

"It's the least I could do, after all you've done for us," the other girl said, with a soft smile. Slade, of course, was just beginning to doze off again.

(Cassie, do you think you could get out of your house today?) Tobias asked, and Cassie looked over to see the hawk just swooping in for a landing on the barn's main crossbeam. (Rachel says there's something weird about that man she rescued.)

"What is it?" she asked, keeping her voice quiet enough that she wouldn't disturb the siblings; she knew that, even if Tobias _couldn't_ hear her very well, he would still know what she had said.

(Apparently, he was a Controller,) Tobias said, cocking his head in that hawk-like way he did even when he was a human. (Rachel said that his family wants to put him in the nuthouse because he told people about the Yeerks. Naturally, Jake wants to check things out.)

"Of course," she said, hefting the bag of dishes. "I'll get back to you once I've arranged it with my parents." Meaning, of course, once she had told all the proper lies, the ones that would let her get out of the house to meet up with the others; the ones that had become so habitual that there were times she wondered if she would ever be trusted by her parents again when this war was over. If it was _ever_ over, and she didn't die during the course of it, anyway.

Just as she was about to turn around and start climbing down the ladder, though, Cassie found herself swept into a pair of very strong arms; then, before she could make even the slightest sound of protest, she suddenly found herself flying through the air, to land with a slight shock on the barn floor. The sound of another body landing on the floor distracted her from wondering just what had happened.

"That was kind of rude, Slade," she heard Shara say, along with the telltale rustling of hay that meant the other girl was coming closer.

"You can put me down now, Slade," she said, when she noticed that the only thing he seemed to be doing was looking around the barn, as if he was making sure that they were really as alone as they looked.

"Right," he said, setting Cassie back on her feet after making one last visual sweep of the barn.

She could almost appreciate his dedication, if he wasn't so intense about it all the time. In fact, he just seemed to be intense in general; as if he believed that something was always out there, just waiting to attack them. Cassie suppressed a wince as she remembered that, for the siblings, that was true: Darkon _was_ out there somewhere, and according to Shara, he wouldn't stop at anything until she and Slade were back with the other Radam Teknomen.

Under those circumstances, Cassie supposed that she could forgive Slade his paranoia; it wasn't like he wasn't entitled to it.

While she regained her bearings enough to be able to make her way out of the barn, Cassie checked over her shoulder to see how Slade and Shara were doing. It looked like they were both all right, and their eyes were glowing in that telltale way that let Cassie know that they were both using their telepathy. Probably so they could talk with Tobias without anyone else being able to overhear.

Once the siblings had begun morphing into their respective bird forms, Cassie turned and left. She knew that Slade and Shara could both take care of themselves, though she did still worry about them sometimes given everything that had happened to them, so now all she had to do was to get herself ready to leave. And everything that entailed, she mused with a sigh; no matter how many times she was forced to do it, Cassie knew she would always hate lying to her parents.

Even though she knew just why it was necessary; even though she knew the kind of risks that the truth could pose to them all, if it were revealed to the wrong person.


	19. Into the breach

As he lead Slade and Shara to their usual rendezvous-point in the woods, somewhere that the not-so-human-members of their group could be themselves without risking the security of the whole war-effort, Tobias reflected that he still didn't quite know what to make of either of them. They were both good to have in a fight, and they were both a bit more dangerous than they tried to make themselves look – especially Slade – but aside from all of that, he still didn't know quite what to think of them as people.

He supposed that he just hadn't had enough time with them to make any kind of judgment on their character. The two of them had only been together for two missions with the other Animorphs, and Slade himself had only been with them for one more than that. And, given the fact that the two of them stayed at Cassie's barn when there wasn't a mission in the works, and he only came there when their _was_, it wasn't like he'd been given much of an opportunity for socializing with the two of them.

Not like he had much more time to socialize with the _other_ Animorphs, though, Tobias reflected with a mental grimace.

(It looks like Jake and the others are landing,) Shara said, bringing Tobias' attention back from where it had briefly wandered. (I can see Marco demorphing now. Rachel's just behind him.)

(Yeah,) he said, resisting the urge to nod; it could have screwed up his flightpath, and besides it wasn't like Shara was looking at _him_, anyway. (You two should get back on the ground and start demorphing, yourselves.)

(Right,) Slade said, speaking for the first time since the three of them had started off on this trip; he really seemed to be a pretty taciturn, close-mouthed kind of guy. The kind that made it easy for people to forget he was even there, sometimes.

As the two siblings folded their wings, diving down to join the rest of the Animorphs who had gathered together in the clearing that had become their unofficial meeting place for those times when the barn itself was just a bit too exposed for the kinds of things that they needed to be discussing – or for when their three not-so-human members needed to be around in unmorphed forms for a long time – Tobias himself fluttered down to a perfect landing on what was quickly starting to become his favorite branch.

As the meeting itself got underway, the others discussing what they were going to be able to do about Mr. Edelman, or at least what they _could_ do for someone who had a Yeerk in their head, Tobias listened with half an ear to the forest all around him. It was his job to make sure that no one and nothing would be able to get close enough to either overhear or attack one of these meetings.

Most animals, he knew, wouldn't bother a gathering of humans, so he didn't worry too much about that kind of thing. Still, he'd learned better than most that anything was possible, so he kept his eyes and ears open.

The consensus in the meeting seemed to be coming down on the side of finding out just what was going on with Mr. Edelman and the Yeerk in his head, since it wasn't like any Yeerk to let their hosts just brazenly reveal themselves to anyone. Not even a family member, unless they were planning to turn that person over to the Yeerks, themselves. He didn't know just what to make of this new development, but Tobias would freely admit to being just as curious as anyone else about it.

With the meeting over, the rest of his fellow Animorphs morphed into birds, and Tobias launched himself into the air to meet up with them.

(So, I meant to as you this before,) Jake said, speaking directly to him without being prompted for the first time since they had all met up. (But, do you know the way to get to this place, Tobias?)

(I've been over the area a fair few times,) he said, smiling inwardly. (I'll get us there, no problem.)

(Thanks,) Jake said, sounding like he'd be smiling back, if he could. (It's good to have you with us, Tobias.)

(Thanks.)

As the eight of them flew on, Tobias carefully studied the ground, picking out the landmarks that he used to navigate from place to place in the absence of more conventional means. He spotted them fairly quickly, leading his seven friends and fellow Animorphs speedily toward their destination. And wondering all the while just what kind of new weirdness this mission would bring.

He hoped it wasn't anything like the last mission.


	20. Metamorph

They all demorphed in the shadow of an empty building, in a parking lot across the street from their ultimate destination. Seeing the building in front of her, so normal looking but somehow eerie in spite of that, Rachel resisted the urge to shudder. There was something decidedly wrong about that building; nothing anyone would really be able to _see_, but after all her time as an Animorph, she knew better than most that what you saw wasn't always the only thing there.

"So that's the nuthouse," Marco said, and there was a definite note of satisfaction in his voice; Rachel suspected that she knew why. "I always figured I'd end up here, sooner or later."

"I don't think you're the only one," Shara responded, even as Marco winked at her.

Looking over at the other girl, Rachel found that she looked just slightly morose, staring at the building in front of her as if it held some kind of great, deep secret. Or just like _she_ was thinking deeply about something. Rachel didn't really know which, but she figured that Shara could look after herself.

Cassie's sigh drew Rachel out of her thoughts. "I don't think the patients really like to be called nuts."

"Of course not," Rachel agreed. "They'd have to be nuts to want to be called nuts." Macro gave her a discreet low-five where none of the others were likely to be able to see it.

(Cassie's right,) Tobias put in. (It's not politically correct to call nuts nuts.)

"You know, you're right," Shara said, with a mock-considering look on her face. "We should probably be calling them the 'differently sane' or something."

"You know," Cassie said, wearing the same expression. "I could swear you were talking to that hawk just now. I must be differently sane."

All of them, with the obvious exception of Slade, laughed at that one. even Jake, who was trying, with his typical lack of success, to get the group to calm down and take what they were doing seriously.

They were standing across the street from the Rupert J. Kirk State Mental Heath Facility. It was a fairly nice-looking place: made of red brick, with an ornamental fountain and several lawn chairs sitting out in the neatly manicured front yard, along with several shade trees scattered about. It would have looked like a completely normal, even pleasant, place to be, save for the chain-link fence that surrounded it; the chain-link fence topped with coils of barbed wire. That, combined with the heavy, wire mesh in the windows, told the Animorphs that this was not a place where anyone was staying voluntarily.

Still, the building looked nice enough; for the most part.

"Who else has the willies?" Cassie wondered aloud.

Beside her, Rachel saw Shara raising her hand, as well. So that made two of them.

"What are willies?" Ax asked, a look of confusion on his human-morph's face.

(A vague, creepy feeling,) Tobias elucidated. (The subtle, unsettling sense that something you can't quite see is desperately wrong.)

"Pretty much the feeling I got when we walked over the top of the Radam's concealed base," Shara said, her tone flat and her eyes fixed on the building they were all observing; though Rachel would have been willing to bet good money that she wasn't actually _seeing_ it.

Marco, who looked like he'd been about to say something, turned to look over at Shara instead. Before anyone else could say anything, though, Jake jerked his head to indicate that they should all be moving along. Rachel shook Shara's shoulder briefly, catching the other girl's attention and getting a brief, grateful smile in return. Together, the eight of them made their way closer to the facility that they had all been observing.

Rachel could have sworn that the sky briefly darkened, almost as if the sun had passed behind a cloud, the moment they all made it there. Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted Tobias flitting from tree to tree as he paced them, and Rachel felt a bit better about the situation.

"It looks easy enough to bust in," Jake observed, after a moment spent taking in the meager security measures that had been pun in place to guard the mental facility. "A fence, a door, no big deal. Not like the Fenestre mansion or the Yeerk Pool. Easy."

"So, there's no chance of you needing my brother in full armor to ride you in rhino morph this time?" Shara asked, a slight smirk on her face as she turned a sidelong look on Jake.

"No, I don't think there is," Jake said, echoing Shara's semi-amused tone.

"Yeah," she said, drawing all of their attention back to the mission at hand. "So, we get in, we find this George Edelman guy and try to figure out what he knows about the Yeerks. Then we leave Marco behind and get out."

Slade gave her a weird look for that one, well, him and Ax, but since neither of them had really seemed to get humor most of the time, Rachel didn't pay them much attention. Jake's raised eyebrow, on the other hand, _did_ catch her eye.

"Okay, I think we just might have to put a limit on the number of nut jokes. This is serious."

Marco made a dismissive noise. "Nah. This isn't serious."

"You're right, Sirius is somewhere over that way," Shara said, pointing up to the sky. "This is probably Bernard's star, or something." No one laughed, so Shara folded her arms and gave a subdued sort of chuckle. "I guess no one gets the astronomy jokes."

"That was a _joke_?" Jake asked, raising both eyebrows this time.

"Wordplay, I guess you'd call it," she said, shrugging. "Anyway, it's not really important."

"Right," Rachel said, nodding. "We need to find an open window, or something."

Easier said than done, it seemed: there _were_ a lot of windows on the building, probably to make the place seem less confining than it otherwise would be, but they were all made of thick glass with heavy, wire mesh covering them. Likely on both sides, but they weren't quite close enough to make out those kinds of details. They weren't going to get that close, either; it was enough of a risk just having seven of the eight of them visible like this, without making it obvious just what they were all so focused on.

"We can't hurt anyone," Jake said, drawing the attention of everyone in the group again. "No fighting. Those are all innocent people in there. We can't take the risk that they might be injured in a battle. It's too far to travel in fly or cockroach morph and still have any real time to search," he continued, seeming to just be thinking out loud now. "Hmm... Maybe it's _not_ so easy, after all."

Just then, as Jake was trying to think up a method to get them all safely inside the mental institution so that they could speak to Edelman, a delivery truck drove up the long, curving driveway, heading toward the far side of the building.

"Was that a food truck?" Jake wondered aloud, as it passed out of their line-of-sight. "Tobias? Can you go take a look?"

The hawk flapped away without a word, returning in under a minute. (It's delivering some kind of food. The truck itself looks pretty big, and it's dark in the back.)

Jake nodded with a certain degree of finality. "Okay, I don't think more than three of us should go. There's probably not that much room in the truck, anyway. We morph to bird, fly into the truck, demorph, and then morph to cockroach. We'll hide in some of the food, so they can carry us right in. Rachel, Shara, since you were the most involved with this guy, you're in. I'll go with you, for backup in case either of you need it," he gave a mildly sardonic look at Shara. "I mean, if you _don't_ need to blow up a building, or kill a bunch of sharks, or something." Jake sobered quickly, continuing to outline the plan. "Tobias doesn't have a useful morph for these kinds of situations, and Ax is way too obvious when he demorphs to be of any help right now."

She wanted to ask just how it was that she and Shara had ended up being volunteered for this mission, though it wasn't like she _wouldn't_ have volunteered if she'd been given then chance, but the three of them were moving out before she had a chance to. It took them maybe about twenty minutes to find a good place to morph into their seagull shapes. But, when they did, she and Jake found that place, they were confronted with a new problem.

"You mean, you couldn't find even _one_ injured seagull in Cassie's barn?" she asked, raising an eyebrow at the other girl.

"Well, I didn't really know I was supposed to be looking," Shara said, with a wry sort of smile. "But, if I'd seen a seagull in the barn, I definitely would have noticed it. It's not very common to find them so far away from the water."

"All right," Jake said, decisive again though he didn't sound particularly enthusiastic about it. "We'll try to get you a seagull morph as soon as we can. You and Slade," he amended, after a slight pause. "For now, though, you need to find something to morph that's not as conspicuous as your usual flying morph." Jake fell silent again, clearly thinking about what they could do next. "Could you call Tobias? Ask him to get you a pigeon?"

"I could do that," Shara said, then closed her eyes. The weird, rosy-pink glow that Rachel had only seen in the other girl's eyes when it was dark shined right through the other girl's eyelids for a moment, then it was gone and Shara opened them again. "He says he'll be right here, though he didn't sound too happy about being sent out for a pigeon."

"Yeah," she said, with a chuckle. "He's not really fond of pigeons. Or most other birds, for that matter. Sounds like they're a bunch of jerks, anyway."

Shara chuckled, just as Tobias himself swept in low over their heads.

(Here, catch this,) he said, dropping the pigeon he'd been holding right into Shara's hands.

Said hands clamped around the body of the pigeon like a vise, pinning its wings to its sides in a way that Rachel couldn't help but think that Cassie wouldn't approve of if she'd been there to see it. The pigeon kicked and struggled a bit, but quickly went limp as Shara began to acquire it. Releasing the bird once she had taken care of that crucial part, the three of them morphed into their various secondary bird forms.

The Dumpster just a bit behind and to the side of them, empty though it was, provided a bit of a distraction to the minds of the seagull that she and Jake had morphed, but for some reason Shara didn't seem to be affected by it. _Come to think of it, she and Slade _never_ seem to be affected by any of their morphs. Not even when they first use them, like Shara's doing right now._

She wondered for a few seconds just why that was, then quickly decided that she would ask Shara herself when all of them had finished with this mission. Now wasn't really the time for those kinds of questions. Flapping her way into the air, pacing Jake and Shara as they all spiraled higher into the air so they would have the maximum speed for the dive they were going to make into the back of the delivery truck, Rachel noticed Cassie and Marco gathering up the clothes that the three of them had left behind. She was glad to see it, since she hadn't been particularly eager to have her and Shara's outfits laying out where anyone could just grab them up.

She knew it was probably a silly thing to think of, especially at a time like this, but that was the way she felt; she'd spent good money on those outfits, after all.

(We need to time this right,) Jake said, drawing her attention back to what they'd all came here for in the first place. (I don't want to be a seagull trapped inside a truck.)

(Yes, that would be bad for security, as Marco might say,) Shara said, sounding like she was trying to lighten the mood a bit; Rachel smiled inwardly. (One... two... three...)

(How about right now?) she said, folding her wings in for a dive.


	21. What They see

She hadn't been particularly eager to go on this mission in the first place, but now that she _was_ here, she wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible. She had timed her dive so that she would start falling just as the driver left, so they would all have plenty of time to get into the truck where no one could see them.

Jake and Shara were quick to join her, but Rachel herself was still leading the way. The three of them swooped neatly into the back of the truck, opening their wings and tilting their spread tails down to kill their speed. With the last of the momentum from her dive, Rachel swooped over the low stacks of cardboard boxes in the back of the truck.

Shara and Jake weren't far behind her.

(That was dumb, Rachel,) Jake said harshly. (You should have waited.)

(I knew it was going to work,) she said, annoyed and a bit defensive about being called dumb.

Sure, Jake _was_ their unofficial leader, and he _did_ tend to worry about all of them when they went out on missions like this, but that didn't give him the right to go insulting people who didn't do everything the way _he_ wanted them to.

(I agree that that wasn't your best idea, Rachel,) Shara said, tilting her pigeon's head slightly. (Still, it _was_ kind of fun.)

(All right, let's demorph,) Jake said. Rachel winked at Shara in lieu of saying anything else; she knew how Jake would get if they stayed in one place for too long. (But, this space looks pretty tight back here, so everyone watch your knees and elbows.)

"I'm telling you, I saw some birds fly in here," an irate voice from outside the truck filtered back to them.

"You see birds? I don't see any birds," a second voice, sounding about as annoyed as the first, answered. "Let's just get this unloaded. I'm on overtime here, and my company don't pay overtime."

(Let's hear it for stressed, underpaid drivers,) Shara said, sounding amused.

Rachel, focusing as she was on her human form, was still kind of amused by what Shara had just said. Still, she put all of that out of her mind so that she could focus more completely on the changes as they happened. She wanted to get this mission _over_ with, and the sooner the better.

Still, the back of the truck they had just flown into was really no place for three humans, especially tall ones like her, Jake and Shara. This was proved in a pretty dramatic way when Shara's emerging finger-and-arm bones forced Shara's hand into Rachel's eye.

Her eyes hadn't yet started sliding toward the middle of her face yet, and to make matters worse her seagull beak hadn't morphed away yet and was even then jammed tightly into a space between two of the boxes. She couldn't even un-jam it, since there was even less space in the back of the truck than there had been when she had noticed the problem in the first place.

As her seagull's beak pulled back into her emerging human face, Rachel began to notice a sharp pain in her back. She worried; that wasn't supposed to happen when people morphed. The Andalite morphing technology was supposed to block out all sensations of pain, or at least numb them to the point where they wouldn't be registered as pain. was something wrong?

Right as she was starting to wonder about that, however, the pain she had been feeling resolved itself into the sensation of... someone's knee being driven into her back.

(Hey, does one of-) she began to ask, but was cut off by the loss of thought-speak as she crossed the arbitrary line from morphed to unmorphed.

_(Does one of us what, Rachel?)_ Shara asked, and there was obvious concern in the other girl's voice.

"Never mind," she said, as her human mouth and lips and tongue reformed at last. "I know what it was. Thanks." However, when she tried to move and couldn't manage even the slightest motion, she frowned. "This is ridiculous."

"Morph to cockroach," Jake said, then he seemed to realize what he'd just said. "Wait, Shara, you _do_ have a cockroach morph, right?"

"No," the girl in question said, smiling slightly. "I could use my fly morph again, though."

"All right," Jake said. "Well, let's get to it, then."

For once, Rachel was only too happy to concentrate on the squirming little bug that she could still remember acquiring. She'd never been particularly fond of the morph itself, and she still wasn't, but in this case smaller _was_ in fact better. A _lot_ better, in fact.

As she continued with her morph, Rachel was acutely aware of the information that Ax had shared with them; the information about where all of their mass went when they morphed something so much smaller than themselves. The fact that all of their extra mass went into some other dimension, some kind of non-space or null-space, called Z-space. The fact that it just hung there, or floated there, or something; some kind of random wad of flesh, guts, and bone.

She didn't particularly like the thought of that.

Still, the morphing itself was disgusting enough that she didn't have much time to worry about anything else; even the fact that the morph she was taking on to protect herself was one of the ones she disliked most. However, as bad as _morphing_ any kind of bug was, it was always worse when you had to watch someone _else_ morph right along with you.

She'd been staring at Shara's face, a face that made her think of a softer version of her own, when Shara's violet eyes – _actual_ violet eyes, which she hadn't thought were possible on a normal person until she had seen Shara's – widened and flattened out and expanded into the compound-eyes of a fly. And, even as all of _those_ changes were going on, the lower half of Shara's face was spitting and changing into the creepy, tube-like fly mouth that Rachel had never particularly liked seeing.

_(Not the most attractive morph in the world,) _Shara said, and Rachel got a definite sense of whimsy from the other girl. _(Flies have never been my favorite thing, really.)_

Rachel tested out her own thought-speak, but it didn't seem like she was far enough over that arbitrary line to use it just yet. So, focusing her thoughts more firmly on the roach, Rachel hurried the morph along. She could barely see Shara at all, both because of the roach's comparatively poor vision, and because the space between them had become so vast as they had shrunk down; she couldn't even see Jake at all.

(You guys still there?) she asked, knowing that she had long since crossed whatever arbitrary line there was between morphed and not-morphed.

(I'm here,) Shara said, using thought-speak that time.

(Yeah,) Jake said, though he seemed to be thinking about something else. (Now, let's take cover inside this box.)

(Right,) she heard Shara answer, as Shara's fly morph took off and the three of them began to move.

She hadn't thought much about the box directly in front of them much while the three of them had been morphing, more out of necessity than anything else, but also because she hadn't been particularly interested in it. It was one box out of the many that had been stuffed into this truck and that were most likely filled with food. But now, it was what was going to get them inside this place.

So that she and Shara would finally be able to put all of this Edelman business behind them.

Falling into line with her fellow roach, thinking for a moment about just how gross any normal human would find the thought of two roaches – or any number, really – crawling into a box of food, Rachel made her way over to the gap in the box that would be their way in. it was probably about an inch wide, which made it incredibly, unnecessarily large as far as any of them were concerned.

One thing that held true for roaches: no matter _how_ gross they were, they only needed the smallest of spaces to work with.

Climbing up and over the side of the box, the three of them slipped into the box and settled themselves down just over the top of... whatever kind of food had been packed inside it. None of their roach eyes were good enough to pick out just what that was, especially in the kind of darkness they were all dealing with. Still, she could smell it, the scent wafting up from the gigantic-looking space beneath them.

(Let's do it!) she called out, charging at full roach speed for the opening in the top of the box they'd been resting on.

Shara laughed, sounding both amused and a bit excited. (You know, Rachel, even after just knowing you _this_ long, I'm starting to think that's your battlecry.)

(You know, you might just have something there,) she said, and she would have smiled if she could; she was really starting to like working with Shara.

She was really starting to see how much they had in common.

As she fell the seemingly huge distance – probably a whole three inches – into the darkness of the box, Rachel wondered for a few moments just what they were going to find when they landed. Soon after that, though, the three of them _did_ land, and Rachel looked around in an effort to see just what it was that she had been smelling for so long. The scent that had tantalized her cockroach senses.

(So, does anyone have any ideas about what might be below us?) Shara asked, after a few minutes of mental silence.

(I don't know,) Rachel said, not having enough information to venture a guess. (But it's some kind of food, and it smells sweet.)

Sudden vibrations through their cardboard surroundings preempted any further conversation; there was a massive-seeming, jarring thud that reverberated through the stack of boxes they were all standing on.

Looking down at what she'd just landed on, Rachel found that it was some kind of a cylinder, though not quite a perfect one; it also curved ever so slightly upward when she looked closer at it. There were more of them, pressed tightly together; each one probably about ten times her current size. Taking another look around, Rachel found that there were more of the strange, faintly curved cylinders; they were all over the place, enough that Rachel wasn't going to bother with counting them.

They each tapered down to a blunt tip, Rachel realized, looking back down at the one she had ended up on top of; each of them gathered together at the ends by a small lump that she could just barely see in the far-off distance, just like a bunch of...

(Oh; bananas!) Shara exclaimed suddenly, evidently having been studying their surroundings just as hard as Rachel herself. (We're standing inside a box of bananas,) she laughed softly. (I almost didn't realize what they were from this scale. Everything looks a bit strange. Sometimes _very_ strange, through these eyes.)

(So that must have been what we were smelling,) Jake put in, speaking up for the first time since the three of them had morphed. (That sweet smell. Good; this should be easy. They're moving us now, so we should be inside in a few minutes. Maybe less, depending on how fast these guys are.)


	22. Arachnophobia

(This is so gross: roaches on bananas,) Rachel said, partly to make conversation and partly because, well it _was_ gross. (Maybe that's why Cassie always washes her bananas before she peels them.)

(No,) Jake said, sounding like he would have been shaking his head if either of them had had necks. (It's because of pesticides. You know, poisons?)

(Poisons?) Shara echoed, sounding uneasy. (It'd only be trace amounts, though. Right? Not enough to harm a cockroach? Or even a fly?)

(Right; I guess they spray poisons on them down in wherever they harvest them. Ecuador or whatever.)

(Actually, I've heard that most of the bananas that are shipped up here come from Brazil,) Shara said, sounding as if she was reciting an old bit of trivia that she had learned awhile ago. (Besides, what's going to be able to eat through a banana peel? I mean, I suppose earthworms could do it, but you'd have to leave the banana itself to rot on the ground before you'd get any earthworms, and that would kind of defeat the purpose of spraying it in the first place.)

(I think it's for the spiders,) she said, searching her own mind for some new information that she could bring to the conversation. (Haven't you ever heard how sometimes there are tarantulas crawling around bananas? Happens all the time; they come up into the holds of ships-)

(Actually, those wouldn't be tarantulas,) Shara interjected. (I've seen pictures of the kind of spider I think you're talking about, and while it's true that the Brazilian Wandering Spider _does_ bear a pretty strong resemblance to a tarantula, they're not the same kind of spider at all. For one thing, the Brazilian Wandering Spider is one of the most venomous spiders in the world.)

(That sound dangerous,) Jake said; for a moment, Rachel almost had to envy his gift for complete and utter understatement.

(It is, but I don't think the odds of us running into a Brazilian Wandering Spider are really all that great,) Shara said. (I mean, these boxes were probably hand-checked before they were shipped out to this place. After all, no one wants to run into one of the world's most venomous spiders when they're trying to unload food. Or any time, really.)

Unfortunately, right at that moment, a shaft of sunlight illuminated the box; normally, Rachel would have considered this a _good_ thing, since it meant she could see her surroundings more clearly, and it also meant that they were finally leaving the truck behind. However, the fact that that same sunlight revealed the presence of the spider that had been sitting there watching them this whole time was reason enough for Rachel to feel uneasy about it.

She would have been nervous enough just thinking it was a tarantula, but after what Shara had told her about the thing they were confronted with... yeah, there was some definite fear involved in her response.

(Um, you guys? Don't either of you make any sudden movements, okay?)

(Why, what is it, Rachel?) Shara asked, sounding more worried for Rachel herself than what the three of them were going to be facing soon. (Is something wrong?)

(Just... look behind you.)


	23. Unexpected Opposition

Obviously, they both did.

Jake screamed; Shara, however, laughed slightly hysterically. (I guess the odds were better than I thought.)

Her and Jake were quick about running after that, but it didn't do much good; the spider was faster than any of them.

(Rachel, where are you?!) Jake demanded.

She didn't have time to think up an answer, however; the spider wasn't more than a couple body-lengths away. And then it was entirely too close for comfort. Even with her dim, fairly useless roach eyes, she could still see the spider's mouth: a beak almost like a hawk's, and the eight, eerily staring eyes in the spider's hairy face.

She would have been scared enough if she was just being chased by a tarantula, but after hearing Shara talk about just what kind of spider they were probably facing right now... yeah, there was a _reason_ that most people were scared of spiders. Rachel's cockroach instincts were screaming at her, telling her to fly, so she opened the hard, glossy shell that had covered her wings up to this point. It couldn't really hurt, and it might be just what she needed to get away from the _world's most venomous spider_ on her tail.

Motoring her cockroach wings for all she was worth, she managed to fly _maybe_ two inches; cockroaches couldn't fly worth crap!

And then the spider was looming over her like some dark shadow of death, all the more terrifying for the intermittent light inside the box they were both still inside. It would have almost been funny, if it were happening to someone else: here she was, in a life-and-death struggle inside a box of bananas. Just one more day in the life of an Animorph.

Just then, another shadow fell over both her and the spider she was struggling with. She didn't have much time to think about what it might be, however, since the spider reared up, flailing two of its front legs in a manner that almost reminded her of a spooked horse. One of the legs came down on her, the claws at the end grabbing the middle left leg that she wouldn't have had if she hadn't been in cockroach morph in the first place.

Then again, if she hadn't been in cockroach morph, she wouldn't have been fighting a spider in the first place, Rachel thought, with a bit of morbid amusement.

The spider's huge fangs, the fangs of the worlds most venomous spider, those fangs meant to pump whatever it was preparing to eat with some of the most deadly toxins in the world, descended on her. But then, whatever had made the shadow that had fallen over Rachel and the spider that was trying to eat her decided to reveal itself then. Whatever it was turned out to be a human; she could hear him yelling:

"Oh! Oh, shit! A spider!"

The bananas went flying out of the box, as the man who'd presumably just dropped it continued backing up. There were bananas everywhere, each of them monstrously huge in Rachel's cockroach vision, but even with all of the turbulence from the giant, falling fruits all around them, that stupid spider still hadn't let her go!

Whoever had been unloading the bananas had dropped the crate that they had been carrying had dropped them just inside the loading dock, scattering the remains of the crate along with the bananas that had once been inside it. The driver came back out, demanding to know what the man who had been carrying the box of bananas thought he was doing. Then, Rachel guessed that he saw the spider, because he shouted for the other man to kill it.

Then again, he might have been talking about the both of them, but anyone knew that you didn't kill a cockroach by stomping on it.

Rachel, who had been scared enough just knowing that she was dealing with the world's most venomous spider, was now forced to deal with the cockroach's panic-reaction to the sudden, bright light that had come streaming down on it after the destruction of the crate. It wasn't pleasant; couple that with the shouts of the driver and the worker from the nuthouse that were vibrating through her body, and both Rachel and the cockroach who was sharing her mind at this point were getting more than a little freaked-out.

One of the bananas that had fallen around her exploded under the impact of a shoe, gushing sweet, sticky banana pulp all over the three of them. And _still_ the stupid spider wouldn't let her go! It pulled her closer, in face, fanged beak straining down towards her.

(Is that one of you guys?) a voice, _the_ voice right at that moment as far as Rachel was concerned, called down to her from far away.

(Yes, it's me!) she called back up, mentally thanking every one of the million years of evolution that had given the red-tailed hawk its magnificent eyes; she was really grateful for those eyes and all that they could see.

She didn't see much of Tobias when he swooped down to rescue her, not with cockroach eyes, but she knew what he was doing when she saw his huge, craggy talons close around the spider that had been menacing her and yank the thing up and out of her range of vision. What little range she had with cockroach eyes, anyway. The spider _still_ wouldn't let go of her leg, even as Tobias ripped the thing free from the ground, so the leg that it had been holding onto – the leg that was still _attached to her_ at that point – was ripped free as well.

It didn't _hurt_ in any real sense, cockroaches didn't have much of a sense for pain, but she still noticed it in a vague sort of way.

(Let's move!) Jake shouted, calling all of their attention back to the mission at hand; this excitement was almost perfect for making someone forget what they were supposed to be doing. (Head toward the shade. That should be the inside of the building; or at least one of the walls.)

(Right,) Shara said, sounding like she'd have nodded if they were all in human form; Rachel didn't say anything, but she fell in with Jake and Shara all the same.

(Hmm,) she heard Tobias say, from somewhere up high in the sky up above them. (Not bad. Not bad at all.)

(Wait, Tobias; you didn't actually _eat_ that spider, did you?) she called, the information that Shara had told them all almost painfully clear in her mind.

(No. I just bit its legs off,) Tobias said, with an easy sort of confidence that made her want to believe him. (It put up a pretty good fight, for a spider. Why? Was there something wrong with that spider?)

(Shara says that that was a Brazilian Wandering Spider; the most venomous spider in the world.)

(Wow,) Tobias said, sounding a bit startled. (Well, I'm _really_ glad I didn't eat it, then.)

(I am, too,) she admitted.


	24. Near escape

(Well, I can safely say that _that_ was a bit more excitement than I like to have before the start of a mission,) Shara said. (Are you all right, Rachel? That spider nearly killed you.)

(I'm fine, thanks for asking,) she said, knowing that Marco wouldn't have bothered; not many of the Animorphs would have, she knew.

They all counted on _her_ to be the strong one; not that she resented them for it or anything stupid like that, but she knew that it was true all the same. It was nice to have someone looking out for her, though. Someone on her side.

(Stick close to the base of the wall,) Jake directed. (I don't want any of us getting stomped. A got swatted in fly morph, and that was _more_ than enough for me. That goes double for you, Shara; stay alert.)

(Thanks, Jake.)

There was a definite consensus on that issue, and as the three of them continued along the rubber baseboard of the kitchen they were all in, Rachel wondered how Shara might be feeling. She'd been almost killed just the same way that Jake had, even if only half her body had been crushed rather than the whole thing; that couldn't have been easy to deal with. But then, recalling the talks that she'd had with the other girl in Cassie's barn, where Shara had talked about the things the Radam had done to her, Slade, and the rest of their family, she wondered for a moment if the threat of dying just didn't mean as much to someone who'd admitted that they sometimes felt as if the world as a whole would have been better off without them.

Before she could ask the question that was on her mind, though, Cassie's thought-speak voice piped up: (I've found the guy you're looking for.)

(What are you doing, Cassie?) she asked.

(Ax and I went into our bird morphs. We've been looking in all the windows, trying to pick out Mr. Edelman. I have him: he's on the second floor, above the kitchen, then maybe about twenty feet along the building itself. He's in a room with three other patients; they're all wearing hospital gowns and slippers. They're watching TV at the moment.)

(They are watching the show called _Gilligan's Island_,) Ax pointed out, as if that was some kind of useful information.

(How in the world would he know about _Gilligan's Island_?) Shara asked, then she continued, answering her own question. (Well, I suppose Cassie could have told him about it, or he could have come in during the title sequence.)

(Okay, straight up,) Jake said.

Rachel thought she heard Shara snickering softly, but since she was already beginning to focus her mind on the climb ahead of her, she didn't pay much attention to that. It probably wasn't anything she would have been interested in, anyway. Probably a private joke or something.

(You know, of all the things I thought I'd be doing with my time, vertical spelunking inside the walls of a building never even entered into it,) Shara said, as they all climbed up the side of a wooden beam that would take them that much closer to their intended destination. (It's just too surreal to think much about, you know?)

Shara didn't seem to be expecting an answer, like she was just talking to fill the silence or something, but it was something to do while they were all stuck inside this wall, so Rachel decided to answer. (Yeah, this life can get pretty surreal, sometimes. Some of the things we end up having to deal with are just _weird_.)

(I don't know what could be that much weirder than climbing the inside of a wall as a cockroach – or a fly, for that matter – looking to speak to a mental patient whose life you saved by catching him in the middle of an attempted suicide in bird morphs, but then you've been at this longer than I have,) Shara said, laughing softly as two of the three of them made their way up over the edge of the post they had been climbing on and hauled their cockroach bodies up onto the cross beam just above it. (I suppose I'll just have to take your word for it.)

They all now stood just in front of a nearly pitch-black, squared-off space. Rachel, for her part, was just the slightest bit nervous about going inside. She'd been attacked by the world's most venomous spider in a place just like this, and who knew what could be hiding in the darkness in front of them. She didn't like it, but she'd go in all the same; it was what was expected of her, after all.

(That light must be from some kind of crack,) Jake said. (I guess we go that way. Unless anyone else has an idea?)

(No; none here,) Shara said, sounding like she'd been thinking a bit.

(All right, then,) Rachel said, drawing the attention of both her fellow Animorphs. (Let's do it.)

(That really _is_ your battlecry, isn't it?) Shara laughed, cheerfully ribbing.

(You know it, sister,) Rachel said, ribbing the other girl right back; really, it was almost like having Cassie with them, only without the sometimes-awkward discussions they got into lately.


	25. To hide and wait

They moved through the wall, heading toward the light, light that made their human brains feel more at ease; it did just the opposite for the roach brains, however. There was a huge tube running through this part of the wall, looking almost the size of a felled redwood tree on their current scale, with relatively smaller tubes branching off of it at regular intervals.

(Plumbing,) Jake commented; Rachel looked back, seeing it now.

It was kind of obvious in retrospect, really. The sudden sense of movement in the darkness just ahead of them made Rachel yelp in surprise, before she realized what it was that she had seen.

(It's another cockroach,) Shara remarked. (Seems you're not really out of place, here.)

(Come on, let's get this over with,) Rachel said, trying not to grumble; she didn't particularly like it in here, what with the small, nearly lightless spaces. Not to mention all the roaches, and the fact that they were her size.

Or really, she was theirs, but she didn't particularly like to think of it _that_ way.

Scampering straight up the nearest vertical pipe to her position, Rachel soon found herself poking her long, whiplike antennae out into the pale light underneath a sink.

(It's a bathroom,) she reported, after having taken a few moments to reorient herself. (Come on, you two.)

The three of them piled out of the hole that she had located, and onto the cool, smooth tile floor at the base of the wall. Rachel, however, couldn't help noticing that it wasn't quite as smooth as it looked when she was a human.

(Do you think we're in the right place?) Shara asked.

(I don't know, I forgot to bring my map of the inside of the walls of the nuthouse.)

(Hmm, I wonder if you could buy one of those at Triple-A?) Shara said mock-thoughtfully.

Rachel laughed. (You know, I might just check that out once we get out of here,) she said, in the same tone that Shara had used. (It'd be a big help for times like this, you have to admit.)

(All right, you two, that's enough,) Jake said, trying to sound stern and unaffected. (We need to have Cassie or one of the others confirm our position. There's a window just a bit above us; let's go.)

(Right, Jake,) Shara said, as the three of them scurried up the wall to the sill bordering the window that Jake had pointed out to them.

(Hey,) Rachel called, directing her thought-speak to the rest of the Animorphs, still in the air where they had been asked to patrol with their own bird morphs. (Do any of you guys see two cockroaches and a fly on a windowsill?)

(Yes,) Ax answered. (I see you. You are in a small room just alongside the room where the human named Edelman is.)

(Thanks,) she said, then turned her attention to the others. (Well, looks like we made it.)

(Good,) Jake said. (Now let's get back down before somebody sees us.)

The three of them made their way back to the space under the sink, then climbed the wall under it to make sure that no one who wasn't looking particularly hard would see them.

(All right, now we need to talk to Mr. Edelman,) Jake said, after they were far enough out of sight of any casual searchers to be safe. (We need to get him to come in here; we'll have at least _some _privacy in here.)

(What then?) she asked. (He talks to a cockroach? Or a fly, as the case may be?)

(No,) Jake said firmly. (One of us needs to demorph and talk to him.)

(I'd be perfectly happy to do that,) Shara said. (Agile as this morph might be, I'm not particularly fond of it.)

(Wait, don't you think that he might find it kind of weird, to find some kid magically appeared in a bathroom to meet him?)

(This _is_ a facility for people with mental problems, Rachel,) Jake pointed out. (Who's going to believe him even if he _does_ talk?)

(All right then, I'll handle this,) she said. (Nothing against you, Shara, but _I_ was the one who spotted Mr. Edelman in the first place, and I'm starting to think I'm sorry I did. You guys just stay up here out of the way; I'd hate for anyone else to see you and end up freaking out.)


	26. Madness and memory

What that, Rachel made her way back down the wall to the floor, already beginning to demorph before she had set the first of her six legs down on it. She shot right up almost immediately, the squares of tile that she had just settled down on growing smaller beneath her feet even as she made her way out from beneath the sink. She didn't want to end up getting stuck down there when she grew too big for the space, after all.

When she had just begun to regain some of her usual height, when she was like two feet tall or something like that; two feet tall, with skin like burnt sugar, huge antennae that were longer than her entire cockroach body had been to start with, human eyes, a thin growth of blonde hair, semi-humanoid legs that bristled with cockroach hairs and the swiftly-melting spikes from her cockroach exoskeleton, and a wide, throbbing yellowish abdomen, the door opened and a man shuffled into the room.

He was wearing an open bathrobe and slippers. At first, he simply made his way toward the toilet that sat off to the side of the room they both now stood in. Then, very slowly, he turned to look at her. Rachel wasn't particularly worried about what this guy might say; after all it was like Jake had said, this was a facility for people with mental illnesses.

Right as the man's eyes fixed on her, by whatever strange and unpredictable process guided the morphing, Rachel's human teeth and lips and tongue emerged from the cockroach's mouthparts.

"Hi," she said, trying to sound as normal as she possibly could; like this was all completely ordinary as far as she was concerned. "Could you get George Edelman for me?"

"Sure," the man said, nodding and starting to make his way out of the bathroom. Before he left, though, he turned back to look over at her. "Are you... real?"

"Nah. I'm just a figment of your imagination," she said.

"Ah," he said, seeming disappointed somehow. "I'll get George."

Continuing her demorphing even as the man whose name she didn't know made his way out of the bathroom, Rachel was soon able to stand and walk as a human. And not a moment too soon, because George Edelman himself came into the room just as she had finished her transition back into her human form.

"Hi," she said, as cheerful as she had been when she had met that other man. She stuck out her hand so he could shake it. "I'm... I'm helping your lawyer with your court case," she said, finally settling on a half-truth.

Mr. Edelman was obviously too startled by the fact that she had just appeared in the bathroom to shake her hand. She couldn't really blame him, though. _She_ wouldn't have really known what to do, if their positions had been reversed.

"Who are you? What are you doing here?" he asked, then he looked down. "You're not wearing shoes."

"Yes, I apologize for my slightly," she paused for a moment, searching for a more sophisticated word than the one she was about to use, but she couldn't think of one; she continued anyway. "My slightly weird appearance, here."

"Yes, weird," Mr. Edelman said, frowning uncertainly at her; his face was so intent, but she didn't know what he was thinking. He shook her hand after that, though. "I guess I'm not one to be talking about "weird"."

"Would you like to have a seat?" she asked, offering him the toilet.

"No. Thanks," Mr. Edelman said, and again he turned a considering look on her. "You're awfully young."

"Thank you," she said, already having thought up her response to just this kind of thing. "Actually, I'm twenty-five, but I work out, I eat the right foods, I don't smoke, and I always wear sunscreen. Mr. Edelman, why did you try to kill yourself?" she asked, before he could ask or say anything else.

Mr. Edelman sat down on the edge of the bathtub with a soft, hopeless sort of sigh. Rachel, for her part, leaned against the sink and tried her best to look the part of a particularly youthful twenty-five year old lawyer's assistant. Mr. Edelman looked back up at her, his confused but kind gray eyes shining briefly in the light spilling in from the window. He made a brief effort to smooth down his hair, but eventually gave the effort up as hopeless.

"I had no choice," he said. "It's this thing in my head."

"Okay," she said, nodding. "Yes. What thing in your head?"

"The Yeerk," Mr. Edelman looked at her with a sick smile, as if he was expecting her to laugh at him and say he was crazy; like everyone else, probably.

"What, exactly, is a Yeerk, sir?" Rachel asked, after she had taken a moment to get her heartbeat and breathing back under control; and to swallow with a throat suddenly dry. "Mr. Edelman," she said, when he didn't speak for a few, long moments. "I promise you I won't laugh. And I won't make you take any more pills. And I won't say you're crazy, either. Now, can you tell me what you mean when you say "Yeerk"?"

"Yes," Edelman said, nodding in obvious relief. "The Yeerks are parasitic aliens. They enter the brain through the ear canal; they take over every function of your conscious mind. They..."

Edelman's speech stopped suddenly as a spasm wracked his body; he jerked wildly, wrapping both arms around himself in an obvious effort at regaining some form of control over himself. It was an effort that was clearly failing, for all of Edelman's determination. His mouth snapped open and shut, teeth clicking and clacking against each other, making him resemble nothing more than some insane ventriloquist's dummy that had been brought to life.

Grabbing Edelman by the shoulders, trying to steady him even though she didn't know quite what was going on with the man, Rachel was startled when he started raving in a strangely high-pitched, manic tone.

"I- I- I what? _Farum yeft kalash sip! Sip! Sip! _The pool! _Gahala sulp!_"he screamed once, briefly, but that was almost the only human sound he made, and even _it_ was distorted by the way he was speaking. "Help! _Coranch! Coranch!_"

Edelman slumped to the ground, falling silent and gasping in an effort to regain his breath; Rachel helped to prop him up.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"No," Edelman whispered. "It happens, sometimes. It's the Yeerk, you see? He's mad. Insane. He's in my head and he won't get out, but he's insane. Completely insane!"

"Okay, okay," she said, raising her hands to try and placate him; she didn't want anyone who wasn't involved in this conversation to come barging in. "Just try to calm down, okay?"

"Yes," he nodded convulsively. "Yes."

"Look, I can't stay much longer. But, you have to tell me: how is the Yeerk staying alive without Kandrona rays? You've been here for more than three days."

The look on Mr. Edelman's face wouldn't have been easy to describe to someone who had decided to ask her, because it wasn't really one expression; it was more of a succession of expressions: hope, dread, amazement. All of them flashed over his face in the time that it took her to blink.

Grabbing him by the shoulders, Rachel shook him slightly. "I know it's weird, but you have to trust me. How does it happen? Why is the Yeerk insane? How does it survive without the Kandrona?"

"Andalite?" Edelman whispered, a tone of awe and wonder in his voice.

"Yes. Andalite," she lied.


	27. Strange weapon

"It's the food!" Edelman said, now eager to share whatever information it was that he had. "The food! During the famine... after you Andalites destroyed the Kandrona, we found out... _they_ found out that a certain food could help them get by. For awhile. But, there were problems with it-" Edelman's screaming cut him off for a few seconds, but there was nothing particularly coherent that came after it. "_Yeft, hiyi yarg felorka! Gafrash fit Visser!_"

Edelman jerked and thrashed and slavered, looking like the mental patient that his family had thought that he was. She didn't know if anyone would be coming, if one of the doctors or attendants would come in response to the commotion that Edelman was causing. But, after a few, long moments during which nothing happened, Rachel decided that she could afford to relax a bit.

She wished that she could help the man before her; she'd spent enough time around Controllers of various types to make at least a few guesses about what Mr. Edelman was saying. Some of it sounded like the words she'd heard the various Hork-Bajir – free or otherwise – say during those times she'd interacted with them. Of course, some of it was words she didn't understand, but that just might mean that it was the Yeerk language or what Taxxons spoke when they were trying to communicate; at least those few times that they _did_ try to communicate.

After a few more moments, during which Rachel still wondered whether they were going to be interrupted or not, Edelman regained control of himself. He sighed, looking down at the floor in sorrow. "Sorry. The Yeerk manages to break through, sometimes. What you hear are the ravings of a crazy Yeerk."

"It's okay," she said, trying to be reassuring. "What's this food? The food that allows Yeerks to survive without the Kandrona?"

"They discovered it by accident," Edelman said, sounding like he was trying to calm himself down slightly so he didn't just go blurting out all of the information that he had been carrying for who-knew-how-long. "No one guessed what it could do; no one realized that it would prove addictive. But it did. Terribly addictive. And, over time, the continued ingestion of it somehow began to eliminate the Yeerks' need for Kandrona rays. At the same time, however, it drove them irreversibly insane. No one knows quite how it works, but there's a theory that it alters the body-chemistry of the Yeerk that comes into contact with it through the trace amounts in the host's bloodstream."

Nodding, Rachel tried to make herself seem as detached and nonchalant as an Andalite would have under the same circumstances; it wasn't easy. They had a weapon now; something that could cripple the Yeerks, even when they were hiding behind their hosts! "What is the food, Mr. Edelman?"

"Oatmeal," Edelman said, with an expression that might have been a smile under better circumstances. "But, only the instant kind. And then, only the maple and ginger flavor." Edelman shook his head, looking confused and a bit sad. "Yeerks cannot resist the addiction, once exposed. And they slowly but surely drive themselves mad. There are dozens of men and women just like me; like this. On the streets, or worse."

"Thank you for telling me this," she said, then, looking at the expression on Edelman's face, she spoke again. "Um... Listen, is there anything I could do for you?"

Edelman shook his head, obviously resigned to his situation, though he still seemed a bit sad about it. "The Yeerks will leave me alone. After all, who's going to believe a madman? I... I'm sorry I tried to kill myself, that time when we met. It all just got to be too much for me. This... this alien lunatic in my head; my family wanting to keep me locked up here... everything."

"Isn't there _some_ way to get the Yeerk out of your head?"

"No," Edelman shook his head, looking almost as sad as Shara had when she had been talking about herself dying; Rachel had hoped never to see an expression like that again. "No. He will live as long as I do."

She looked away, not wanting to look at that expression, even on someone she didn't know very well.

"I just wish..." she heard Edelman say, his tone resigned again. "The times when I am myself, when I'm in control, I wish I didn't have to spend them in here."

Looking back at Edelman, Rachel found that he was staring out the window, dirty and embedded with heavy wire mesh. She didn't really blame him; no one would ever _want_ to stay in a place like this. Not even if they were told that they had to.

She didn't want to give him any false hopes, though, so she didn't say anything. Not about _that_, anyway. "Look, I've got to go now, but thank you for giving me this information. It will be a great help to... to the resistance."

Edelman chuckled softly. "I'm just glad to hear that there _is_ still a resistance. I wish you and your fellow Andalites the best of luck."

Edelman turned away without her having to ask him to do so, so she didn't have to make up any excuses for him. Which was good, because she didn't really have any in mind at the moment.

Concentrating on the cockroach morph that she had left behind, Rachel hurried it along when she could, and she was soon ready to move out again.

(You guys won't believe what I've found out here,) Rachel said, as she found her way back to where Shara and Jake were waiting.

(What was it, Rachel?) Jake asked.

(I think we should wait, at least until we all get back to the barn. I'm sure Rachel wouldn't like telling the same story twice,) Shara said.

Rachel would have smiled, if she'd been capable of any expressions at the moment. (I think that's the best idea. I don't think you guys would enjoy hearing the same old story twice any more than I'd enjoy telling it.)

(All right then, let's get going,) Jake said, as the three of them began moving again.

Thinking back on what she had seen while she had been speaking to Mr. Edelman, Rachel decided to talk to Shara; she'd gained a bit more understanding about what the two of them – well, three of them including Cassie, really – had talked about the day before yesterday. (Hey, Shara?)

(What is it, Rachel?)

(While I was talking with Mr. Edelman, he mentioned how everything was getting to be too much for him,) she said, then paused, considering whether or not to reveal just _what_ Mr. Edelman had thought was too much. In the end, though, she figured that it wasn't _that_ important; Shara could probably guess at it, anyway. (I guess, I understand what you were talking about, now. That doesn't mean I _agree_ with it, of course; but I guess there's only so much that some people can deal with at once.)

(It's nice to see that you have a new perspective on things,) the other girl said, as the three of them continued on their way out of the walls. (Not everything is as simple as we might like, sometimes.)

That seemed to be the end of their conversation, at least as far as Shara was concerned. That suited Rachel, too, and as the three of them continued to move through the walls, she found herself grateful that they hadn't run into any more cockroaches. All other considerations aside, she just didn't like the look of those things at this scale.

The fact that she was one of them, and hence _why_ she was down at that scale, only registered for a few moments before she brushed it off.


	28. Unorthodox Weaponry

They met up with Cassie, Ax, and the others just outside the building, in a blind spot that Tobias reported no one was approaching from any side. All of them, with the obvious exception of Tobias himself, landed and demorphed before morphing into their usual collection of bird morphs. Then, with the two-hour time limit no longer hanging over all of their heads, the eight of them set off toward the barn.

Rachel, in particular, was eager to get back to the barn so that she could explain just what the new weapon they had against the Yeerks; a weapon that they wouldn't be able to fight against, something that could destroy them all before they could become an even worse threat than they already were. A weapon that would, _finally_, take some of the pressure off of her and the others so that they could rest a bit. And, she thought with a slight mental sigh, so that they could begin figuring out what to do when the Radam finally started to make their move.

After a bit more flying, she didn't bother to ask anyone if they'd managed to spot a clock on the way since it wasn't really that important and she wasn't really interested in any case, they reached Cassie's barn. Folding her wings as the others all dove into the hayloft window, Rachel followed them down. Swooping in just after Ax and Slade had done likewise, Rachel flared her wings to kill her speed and circled the rest of the way down to the floor.

Demorphing as soon as her talons touched the ground, Rachel made her way over to the hay-bale that she usually sat on and settled down on it.

"All right," she said, drawing the attention of the others who had just finished their own demorphs; or not even bothered, in Tobias' case. "This is what I've found out." And then she began to lay out, bit by bit, everything that she and Edelman had talked about while she had been sitting in the nuthouse bathroom with him.

Well, _almost_ everything; she left out the part where he had talked about suicide, and the part where he had expressed a desire to leave. She'd probably discuss that last part with Shara after all of this was out of the way; but for now it wasn't important. Nor was it really anyone else's business, either.

"Well, we've just found our ultimate weapon," Marco summed-up for everyone. "Maple and ginger oatmeal."

"_Instant_ maple and ginger oatmeal," she corrected.

"Right, instant," Marco amended quickly, smirking the way he always seemed to be doing.

Most of the others, that was to say Cassie, Ax, and Tobias, all stared at her and Marco in plain disbelief. No one quite seemed to know how to react to this new information.

"Oatmeal," Cassie repeated, incredulous.

"Oatmeal," Jake confirmed, with a short, sharp nod. "But only the instant maple and ginger kind. Mr. Edelman said that they didn't know why, but they think it might have something to do with the chemicals in the host's bloodstream while they're digesting this stuff."

(Maybe it's the maple,) Tobias suggested.

"Maybe it's the ginger," she suggested in turn, settling back on the hay-bale. "Or maybe it's the "instant". Whatever the heck _that_ is. Who really cares? Suddenly, after all this time, we have a weapon to use on human-Controllers. A human-Controller who eats this stuff gets their Yeerk hooked, and then that Yeerk goes nuts. What we have to do is find a way to get a lot of this stuff into a lot of Controllers."

She said this last with a sidelong glance at Cassie, knowing that if anyone was going to object to this latest of plans, it was going to be her. Cassie, however, merely continued checking the bandage on an injured badger through the bars of its cage. To her, and probably a lot of other peoples', surprise, it was _Tobias_ who spoke up.

(You know, something about this just doesn't seem right,) the hawk said. (Not at all.)


End file.
